The Five Things I Learned in Writing Grassroots Priorities

The Five Things I Learned in Writing Grassroots Priorities

Apr 10, 2024 | GAWTP Featured Post

The Five Things I Learned in Writing Grassroots Priorities

By Brett Rogers | April 3, 2024

GrassrootsPriorities.com is the website I built with the guidance and support of JoAnn Fleming and Robert Shulter. It was a monumental task that took the better part of three months (March to May 2023). It endeavored to bring to life and connect the dots given to us by the Texas Legisature Online.

Thankfully, it was well-received and very much used. Thousands and thousands of times you queried the website to learn about votes, legislators and committee testimony. I’m glad it helped.

We also saw the use of our map, your capture of the way we color code votes to make it easier to see, and your use of a legislator’s Quick Summary. A picture can truly be worth a thousand words.

But I learned some things in building the website, and I thought I would share that with you.

1. “Big Government” is Much Bigger than We Thought.

There’s a great meme that starts out asking “Should the government…” and then immediately moves to a big “NO!”

It’s funny and gets shared because it’s true. It might be that we say we want the government to do far less, but the sad truth is that there are 11,807 bills on the website. Government isn’t doing less; it’s doing more, and often without our knowledge.

A few Republican legislators brag that they have the “most bills authored” or the “most bills passed!” Unless those bills have the word “repeal” in them, we should never be impressed by anyone who wants to pass more bills. That’s just more government, which means more meddling in your life, which means more taxes you have to pay. I fail to see how that’s a good thing.

And almost all of the bills should just have a heart emoji stuck to them. Because “the legislator cares, don’t you know?” or because we should “do something about this.” Except that the government almost always screws it up and its solutions cost twice as much as they would have otherwise.

When the government spends money on a “solution,” you’re the source of revenue to pay for that solution. Always remember that.

2. Lobbyists and Legislators Like that the Grassroots Fight the Culture War.

One of the epiphanies I had was when I looked at what bills brought the top 50 paid lobbyists with five or more clients before committees. Not one of them was a GOP priority bill. They were generally what I call money bills or permission bills.

A money bill is where a corporation or a municipality tries to access “state funds” (aka your taxpayer money) for their pet project.

A permission bill is where they want to expand the law to allow them to do something they legally couldn’t do
before. They want their hurdles removed or their jurisdiction broadened.

For the last several legislative sessions, the conservative grassroots have focused on bills that apply to the culture war or to ensuring that government adheres to the rule of law.

The lobbyists, I think, love that we fight in a different arena than they do. They get away with a lot of money movement and permission that works for ambitions of their clients. Meanwhile, we fight to keep porn out of schools and make sure that we don’t surgically remove the genitals of children. It’s important and good that we do, don’t get me wrong, but the less we see where the lobbyists spend their time, the better for the lobbyists – who also give a lot of money to powerful people throughout government.

Fifty thousand dollars in donations to help the legislature greenlight a two-million-dollar project is a great return for the money spent.

When the government spends, the government taxes you to pay for the spending. We need to watch this activity in our government like we watch the GOP Priority bills that focus on rule of law and culture. (Hint: With GrassrootsPriorities 2.0, we’re about to help you do just that!)

3. Republicans Who Disagree More with Other Republicans Than They Do Democrats are No Republicans.

If I stand in a room with nine other people and there are no labels, the people with whom I disagree most are not on the same side as me.

That seems kind of obvious to say, doesn’t it?

But if I stand in a room with nine other people and half are labeled “Republican” and half are labeled “Democrat,” and if a couple of the people with whom I disagree most are labeled “Republican,” some Republicans don’t like that I say there are Republicans who are not on the same side as me.

To them I ask, on what issue do you join with the Democrats more than you join with the Republicans? Because that’s what disagreement with other Republicans means – you’re siding with the Democrats.

When working to figure out how to explain this, I realized that we all feel betrayed when Chief Justice John Roberts sides with the liberals on the Supreme Court. I’ve never met a Republican who said, “Thank goodness John Roberts sided with Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.” Have you? Then why should any Republican think it’s a good idea to join with Democrats in our legislature?

Some might be tempted to say that some elected Republicans have to be flexible because of the liberals in their district. If that were true, then how can we explain West Texas representatives Ken King, Dustin Burrows, Stan Lambert, and Drew Darby? Each of them strongly disagrees with other Republicans before they ever disagree with Democrats. And it’s not just West Texas – but let’s just stop saying something that isn’t true. It’s not because of the strong liberals in their district who need representation. It’s because these representatives agree with Democrats on too many things.

4. Republican Representatives are Smart Enough to Vote for GOP Priority Bills that Make It to the Floor.

Many of you queried to see how a Republican legislator voted on our priority bills. Here’s the short answer: Yes, maybe they did.

But here’s the back story: there were 216 priority bills. Only 13 passed. Election integrity, border security, banning Democrat chairs… these got no real traction during regular session.

Most priority bills die before they get to the floor for a vote. Granted, some are companion bills, meaning that they have the same language or try to do the same thing. But look at this screenshot for election integrity bills:

Notice a pattern? This is from the House Elections Committee chaired by a Republican – Reggie Smith, who was just defeated by Shelley Luther.

Republican State Rep. Todd Hunter has the dubious distinction of being the only Republican to vote against any Priority Bill in its final passage, and that was HB 1243 – the bill that made voter fraud a felony again!

It’s not about whether our Republicans vote for the bill if it makes it to a floor vote; it’s about how hard they fight to make sure it gets to a floor vote.

5. How Some State Reps. Game the System to Make Themselves Look Better.

Some representatives got busted during the session doing things to make themselves look more conservative…such as signing up to coauthor long-dead bills. Or registering a “No” on Local and Consent bills to increase their rank on the Rice University survey. Or using Statements of Vote to obfuscate how they really feel about a bill. Let’s discuss each one.

First, “coauthor” is a misnomer. It makes it sound as though a representative sat with the author and, together, they struggled through the language of the bill to get it right. That’s not it at all. Being a coauthor is a high five. A thumbs up. You, from your kitchen table at home who agree with a bill, do as much “authoring” on the bill as a coauthor does. If it were better labeled, it would be “supporter,” and not “coauthor.”

When a bill dies in committee in April, what’s the point of becoming a “supporter” in late May? There is no point, except to be able to tell your constituents that you “coauthored” a bill. Do you see how that is disingenuous? And yet, many do it. We will continue to point that out.

Second, Local and Consent bills are going to pass. That’s why they are in Local and Consent. These bills are passed in groups, omnibus-style, and they should only be included if they need no debate whatsoever.

Bills get into the Local and Consent committee because the House Speaker puts them there. When the vote happens, you vote for all of the bills in a single vote, but you’re allowed to register an objection, a “No,” if you would not have voted for a bill in the bundle had it been all by itself.

The Rice University survey at first used these “No” objections when ranking the representatives. The more a representative voted “No,” the higher they would appear in the rankings. So, Jared Patterson registered a “No” 769 times. Primary defeated Kronda Thimesch registered a “No” 558 times. As a result, each bragged about their initial placement in the survey.

Then Rice University redid their rankings, disregarding the Local and Consent objections, and Jared Patterson fell from 1st to 15th. Kronda Thimesch fell 33 places. Mitch Little just defeated her!

If they’re actually against the majority of the bills placed into Local and Consent by the Speaker who put these bills there to pass, why be so enthusiastic about the Speaker who places bad bills into Local and Consent for passage? According to the two of them, well over five hundred deserved debate and not passage. And yet, Patterson and Thimesch have remained very supportive of the Speaker.

Perhaps they didn’t really disagree at all, really. Perhaps it was just for show.

Third, a Statement of Vote is a way to put into the House Journal after a vote, “Oops – I voted the wrong way.” It doesn’t change the vote. It’s kind of a mulligan and is sometimes used to placate a constituent who is disappointed in the representative’s vote.

Being a representative is complicated, no question. It’s very demanding. But what’s not demanding is pushing the “Aye” or “Nay” buttons.

Democrats, on average, use a Statement of Vote 20 times during session.

Republicans, on average, use a Statement of Vote 40 times during session.

Are Republicans far less capable of accurately pushing buttons than Democrats? And why do some representatives, like Jeff Leach, have over 200 Statements of Vote?

Sometimes, a legislator who steps away from the desk has their desk mate vote for them and the desk mate doesn’t vote correctly. It’s probably a good idea to ensure that you either give your desk mate explicit instructions, or simply don’t vote. Having too many Statements of Vote is a bad look.

All of these things are hinky. We don’t need hinky in our legislature.

I’ve been asked what the future is for GrassrootsPriorities.com. You should know that it will continue, whether I’m here or not. It belongs to Grassroots America – We the People. They have the database and the code and all of the algorithms that populated it. It will be a permanent part of the political landscape in Texas as long as Grassroots America exists.

We’re looking to expand it. Transparency is essential to governing government. The intent of the founders was never to limit the people, but to limit government. It’s time to start limiting government again.

If you have ideas and recommendations, please send them to me (email address below). Part of the reason that you have the “no cost to you” legislative transparency tool that you have today is because of your input as it was being built.

Grassroots America means what it says when it says, “We the People.” The mission remains to Unite, Educate, and Empower, and we built GrassrootsPriorities.com for exactly that reason.

See you in the trenches for Liberty,
Brett Rogers
brett@shootmealready.com

SoS Voter Errors Update 2

SoS Voter Errors Update 2

Mar 2, 2024 | Voter Info

Editor’s note: The author of the following message – Brett Rogers – has worked thirty years in the IT business and over twenty years with enterprise database tools – for Fortune 100 companies and dozens of small and mid-size clients.  He can be reached here: brett@rightrally.com.

One Citizen, One Vote –
Our Reasonable Expectation
By Brett Rogers, Data Analyst
Marketing and IT tool development services

Texans deserve a fair and accurate election system. One citizen, one vote.

As I wrote recently, “If ours is truly a government of ‘We the People,’ then transparency is prerequisite. Transparency safeguards citizens.”

In the past week, Grassroots America – We the People worked behind the scenes to connect with various elected officials to understand the anomalies that we found in the Election Information and Turnout Data made available at the Secretary of State website. We’re thrilled at the transparency of this data. We applaud the Secretary of State for making it available to us.

I didn’t download this data to cause trouble, or even to pursue issues of election integrity. I did it to assist “get out the vote” efforts across the state of Texas. But the data guy in me always checks the data with which I work, so I did some basic integrity checks. One of those checks is a duplication check. Minutes later, I discovered duplicates in the data.

I reached out to JoAnn with my discovery, and she encouraged me to keep an eye on it and keep her informed. As I found that this was a consistent discovery in each day’s data download, she began using her contacts to reach out to people. She reached out to Sen. Bob Hall and Sen. Tan Parker, both of whom care about this issue very much. JoAnn also reached out to AG Paxton, who instructed one of his Deputy AGs call her. They are watching our reports.

I reached out to a well-known data analyst here in Texas. I didn’t hear from him, but I did later through Twitter, after the information had gone public. I’ll discuss that more in a moment.

Sen. Hall contacted me and said that this was likely a poll book issue, but had no concrete explanation. I appreciated his time.

As we progressed toward the end of early voting, JoAnn made the decision to elevate it in an email that was sent out on Wednesday evening, February 28th.

The next morning, Thursday, we noticed that the duplications we’d found were cleaned up and no longer in the data. Shortly thereafter, I heard from Sen. Tan Parker. We discussed the issue. I told him of the new duplicates of the day. He later returned in a phone call with Christina Adkins of the Secretary of State’s office. We had a good conversation for 15 minutes.

They expressed their thanks, they agreed with our concerns, and we discussed the issues with the “unofficial” 2024 data and with the “official” 2022 data. They agreed that more should come of this. Sen. Parker asked his aide on the call to begin to work on legislation for the next session to help safeguard election integrity.

That evening, at the request of an SREC, I met online with RPT Vice-Chair Dana Myers and 18 SREC representatives for close to an hour. I showed them how I discovered the issue, some of the concerns I had, and took their questions. It was a productive conversation. In my mind, we’d done what we could to ensure integrity in this period of early voting in the primary.

On Friday, a few people went on Twitter to deride our efforts. I find that unfortunate, as one of them was the very person to whom I reached out earlier in the week who chose not to have a conversation with me.

Social media feels safe for its distance, and insults can be fun, but an earnest effort to secure our election data with simple checks, such as for duplicates, is entirely reasonable. I’ve invited this individual via a response to his Twitter attack to have an actual conversation. Perhaps one day we will. I enjoy his emails about the election as it progresses.

I believe strongly in a limited government, where consent of the governed matters to those elected. When there is a lack transparency, when we discover issues, and when we have concerns, we have the right to address those matters with the folks in government.

I want to thank Christina Adkins for her welcome candor and willingness to listen. I want to thank Sen. Tan Parker for his initiative to do the right thing in securing elections. I thank Sen. Bob Hall for his persistent efforts to ensure that our elections are not a black box where there is no transparency. Grassroots America Board member Tom Fabry is due a salute as well since he checked and double-checked my findings.  Tom is quite the analyst himself having led the design, construction, and operation of a global network of six engineering and research & development labs across four continents for Hewlitt-Packard (HP) and their global clients, a position he held until retiring.

Most of all, I want to thank JoAnn Fleming. Fighting for the common-sense Republican priorities will bring its detractors. JoAnn doesn’t care about the naysayers. She will do what she has to do to fight for the priorities of commonsense Texans who know that election integrity matters.

One citizen, one vote – in a system that is so transparent that that no Texan can question it – that’s the goal. We’re not there yet, but we can get there.

God bless Texas,
Brett

SoS Voter Errors Update 2

SOS Voter Errors Update

Feb 29, 2024 | Voter Info

This is an update on our alert last evening exposing the SOS duplicate voters showing up in Early Voting files.

Read through this first, in case you missed the alert.

Also, please direct all voter data questions to our lead data analyst Brett Rogers, brett@shootmealready.com.

Interesting! We noticed this morning that the alert we sent yesterday demonstrating how voter duplicates had been added into the voter cumulative totals shown on the SOS website got somebody’s attention! The duplicates we highlighted last evening are now removed.
 
That’s nice, but it swept the problem under the rug.  That did not address The Problem. We downloaded the data for Feb. 27 and Feb. 28 and found these duplicates in new counties:

The underlying problem remains! There are no controls in place to prevent this from happening in the first place. There should be and we won’t stop until the necessary controls are there.  Like you, we are tired of the foot-dragging on the most basic elements of election integrity!

This is NOT a new problem. We downloaded the data from the 2022 Republican Primary and found these duplicates as well.  NOTE the instances where the SAME Voter Unique Identifier (VUID) shows up voting by mail and in-person! 

And don’t get us started with the 2022 General Election results… 
 
The bottom line is this: there needs to be controls in place to prevent this from happening. Those controls are not in place, and if election integrity matters to those in office here in Texas, then those in charge of managing this need to know that we are monitoring this and will continue to point it out until those controls are in place.

SoS Voter Errors Update 2

Warning Voter Data Errors Found

Feb 28, 2024 | Voter Info

Warning! What you are about to see is disturbing.

Grassroots America is providing total transparency –
documenting a very real, serious problem with actual early voting data.

Inaccurate voter data must be corrected NOW – and prevented –
before any “official” results of the 2024 Primary Election are published.

Our Executive Director has been alerting elected officials for the last few days and spoke with a Deputy Attorney General today.
It’s time you know about it, see it for yourself, and demand answers.

FACT:  The Texas Secretary of State’s “official” early voting results lack integrity controls.

This is not a statistical anomaly,
but specific, auditable examples of duplicate early voter records.


Grassroots America’s data analysts* have discovered:

  • Several thousand duplicate votes recorded for the same VUIDs (VUID = Voter Unique Identifier) over six days!
  • Duplicate voters recorded for the same VUID on DIFFERENT days!
  • Duplicate voter records for the same VUID voting in person AND by mail!

These duplicates are included in the Secretary of State’s Official Election Results.

This is absolutely provable.  
It is NOT acceptable.  
It must be corrected now.
It cannot wait until after early voting closes!

There may well be some erroneous data coming from the counties.  But the real problem lies at the Secretary of State’s Office – the agency charged with enforcing election integrity laws and the repository of “official” election results.  They obviously do not have the most rudimentary controls in their intake, data validation, and batch control processes, or these duplicates could not be recorded.

FACT: Grassroots America’s data team has discovered that there are duplicates in the cumulative voter totals at the Secretary of State website.  Now, we’ll show you how you can replicate the problem yourself – see below:

The following counties show duplicates:

Potter, Hale, Medina, Bandera, Wichita, Brazoria, Dickens, Camp, Fort Bend, Young, Delta, Zavala, Culberson, Wheeler, Comal, and Jack counties.  There may be more in the days ahead.
 

This demands an investigation by the Attorney General,
 the Secretary of State, and county officials.

Appropriate safeguards and integrity measures must be in place to prevent this! Prevention of recording duplicate votes is a reasonable expectation and a BASIC standard! 

Contact your State Republican Executive Committee representatives and request the Republican Party of Texas take action. Find contact form at the bottom of this linked site.

 Call Secretary of State Jane Nelson. Let her know you are aware of a problem that needs her immediate attention!
(512) 463-5770

 Contact SoS Nelson’s Director of the Elections Division, Christina Adkins (512) 463-9859 | Email: CAdkins@sos.texas.gov

 Contact your State Representative and State Senator. Find contact information here.

See the proof for yourself! Replicate the report and view the SOS duplicates with these steps:
 

STEP 1:  Go to: https://earlyvoting.texas-election.com/Elections/getElectionEVDates.do

STEP 2:  Select the March 5th Republican Primary.

STEP 3:  Then select February 23rd and click Submit.

STEP 4:  You will get the following report.  Scroll down to CAMP county and use Click Here to download the CSV file.

STEP 5:  Open the CSV in Excel, you can see the duplicates (just as we found below).

Want to see all duplicates, which counties have duplicates on which days? Go to:
https://grassrootspriorities.com/20240227_dupes.xlsx

Note: For the tech folks: This four-minute VIDEO documents the actual steps our data team followed to validate the duplicate voter record problem.   You can also view the actual .CSV files downloaded from the SOS site in a zip file HERE. 

*Two of our leading data analysts:
Brett Rogers | 30 years in the IT business and over twenty years with enterprise database tools; worked for Fortune 100 companies and dozens of small and mid-size clients.  brett@rightrally.com

Tom Fabry | Led the design, construction, and operation of a global network of six engineering and research & development labs across four continents for Hewlitt-Packard (HP) and their global clients, a position he held until retiring. tcfabry@yahoo.com

SoS Voter Errors Update 2

After the 2024 Primary, Will Our Legislators Try to Hide Their Actions from You?

Feb 29, 2024 | GAWTP Blog

After the 2024 Primary,

Will Our Legislators Try to

Hide Their Actions from You?

By Brett Rogers | Feb. 28, 2024 

What government – any level of government – does in secret, it does without the consent of the governed.

If ours is truly a government of “We the People,” then transparency is prerequisite. Transparency holds those who commit bad actions accountable. Publication of the actions of government officials provides essential transparency.  Transparency  safeguards citizens, thereby undergirding enduring liberty.

In this past year, Grassroots America We the People created something unique – a legislative transparency tool that connected dots, and summarized for understanding, the network of actions of the actors from within our Texas legislature. The website highlighted the good and the bad, and made all of this available for free to the people of Texas. We call this website Grassroots Priorities (grassrootspriorities.com).

What we learned is that an overwhelming amount of information available at Texas Legislature Online (TLO) makes it easier for our government to act in secret. For example, very few people knew what a “Statement of Vote” was prior to the development of Grassroots Priorities. Now, during the 2024 Primary Election cycle, this legislative addendum to record votes on the floor of the House is a central topic in some races.

By making such information transparent to the public, it’s almost certain that legislators will curb future use of a “Statement of Vote,” which allows a legislator to state in the House journal that his/her vote “yes” really should have been a vote “no” – or vice versa. 

The people also learned that this action by a legislator changed nothing. A vote miscast is forever an error. What’s cast is cast.

Our legislators should be careful about their votes. It’s a major part of what they are hired at the ballot box to do on our behalf. And whether miscast or not, they should be judged on their actual voting record.  Why? Because their actions have long-term consequences for the people of Texas and future generations. 

Many other aspects of the legislature’s activity were exposed, and our legislators were then called to answer for their actions. This is good and necessary – and most importantly – it must continue. And if anything is to change, it must be made easier to obtain this public data, not more difficult. 

Having taken “heat” from their constituents, legislators might be tempted to make the transparency we achieved harder to achieve in the future. Political actions taken in darkness endanger every Texan. 

Grassroots America – We the People believes the 2024 Texas Republican Party Platform should include a plank that calls for this public legislative data (bills, actions, testimonies, committee actions, journal activities, record votes in both chambers, fiscal notes, etc.) to simply be available as files for download for any citizen to obtain. Anything less must be unacceptable.

We’ve heard from many other states that they would love a tool such as we now have in Texas. The citizens of those states should push for such data to be available for summary and analysis.

And yes, the same should be true at the federal level.

Any legislator who wants to curb our access to the records of our government should be reprimanded and hopefully removed in a robust primary.

We’ve made every effort to ensure that the massive amount of information we made available through Grassroots Priorities was accurate and lined up with the information found with the public record at Texas Legislature Online (TLO). Much of what we produced, links or points directly back to the TLO itself, so that people would not have to just take our word for it.  Grassroots America WANTS the people to see the facts and reach conclusions for themselves.  Why? Because this builds a strong, independent, informed citizenry – the essential ingredient for enduring liberty!

We strongly believe that if data is made available to the public, then those who summarize and analyze the data should also be held accountable – just as any news organization. This is why we have an FAQ section on our Grassroots Priorities website, which explains any changes we make on the website. If any corrections need to be made, we’ll always post those.

Truth. We are all better off when we have the truth made known to us. No one can make good decisions without good and accurate information.

From those elected to “govern,” we must insist upon a renewed respect for and commitment to this First Founding Principle of Liberty – Consent of the Governed.  

In order to give or withhold informed consent, We the People must have access to the data needed to fully review both the planned and completed actions of those elected to act on our behalf – because only that can be called “good” government.    

                                                                                                        BR 2024