After acting Secretary of State David Whitley’s disastrous publishing of THE LIST, there are two questions that must be asked:

1. Is David Whitley a lying, radical partisan doing Greg Abbott’s bidding to suppress minority voters?
2. Or is he just simply incompetent?

The answer to both of these questions is the same – Whitley must go.  He should not be confirmed as the Secretary of State of Texas since one of that role’s prime jobs is to ensure full and fair elections.  His first major act utterly failed to do that.  Whitley is an Abbott acolyte who’s only actual government experience is deputy chief of staff and appointments maker.  He rocketed into the Secretary of State role in December when Abbott put him in the job.

Let’s not beat around the bush – Whitley published this list with great fanfare for one reason and one reason only – to create the false impression that undocumented people are voting in Texas.  That, of course, is a blatant lie.  The only evidence you need of that conclusion is the coordinated media responses to the shocking announcement by Ken Paxton and even His Orangeness himself.  The announcements didn’t say that the Secretary of State was asking counties to “study” the list, they declared that 95,000 non-citizens were registered to vote and that 58,000 did indeed vote in the 2018 election.  They did that to de-legitimize Beto O’Rourke’s very strong showing against Worst Senator in the History of Texas, Ted Cruz and to set the table for this election cycle of legislating more voter suppression to stem the tide of changing demographics in Texas. And it was a gigantic lie, as is becoming more and more obvious.

David Whitley needs to be shown the door with the toe of the Senate’s boot.  Even Republicans, the beneficiaries of the lies and voter suppression efforts in Texas, need to recognize that at some point cheating and lying won’t work effectively enough for them to maintain power and that they should rethink their radical partisan agenda.

Whitley must be rejected.