Texas Election Director Uncovers 75,000 Unaccounted Ballots | Debbie Lindstrom Ep. 005

Most Americans cast their ballot and trust that the system is working as intended. But what happens when someone starts asking questions and follows the paper trail?

In this episode of The Defending Freedom Show, Colby Wiltse sits down with Debbie Lindstrom, Texas State Director of Elections for Citizens Defending Freedom, to discuss what she uncovered after years of investigating election records, ballot chain-of-custody documents, and voting procedures across Texas.

From missing election records and unaccounted-for ballots to transparency, accountability, and citizen oversight, Debbie shares how an ordinary voter became one of the leading voices for election integrity in Texas.
Whether you're concerned about election security, government transparency, or simply want to understand how elections actually work, this conversation offers a behind-the-scenes look at the systems that shape every vote.
This is more than a discussion about elections. It's a conversation about accountability, trust, and the responsibility of citizens to stay engaged.

Subscribe to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheDefendingFreedomShow

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Uh secretary state oversees all the elections. They didn't look into it. They just kind of came back after a while and said, Yeah, they need to do a better job of training. They need to do better training. Use those to manipulate an election outcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Secretary needs to help push election accountability legislation.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

I think some of the things that people are going to share with us today are really going to expose and open people's eyes to what really goes on in election. Debbie Lynchram, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

They don't really understand how elections work, the processes, what happens behind the scenes. I think most people just show up, uh, cast a ballot, and then they think, oh, everything's taken care of, everything's all good. I I did my part, I did my duty, I voted. But there's more to that story than I think people realize. And so I'm excited to have you here today. You're the Texas State Director for Elections for Citizens Defending Freedom. And uh I think some of the things that you're gonna share with us today are really gonna expose um and open people's eyes to what really goes on in elections. And so let's just start right here. So we all started somewhere. We all kind of got engaged in this uh fight at some point. So what was the moment for you that said, you know what, I can no longer just sit on the sidelines and be a spectator? Like I've got to get involved.

SPEAKER_03 2:28

So I was like what you just described. I was a just an average voter that voted every time, but that's all I did. I didn't really know that I needed to do anything more. And so when 2020 happened and you saw all of the crazy things that you saw people pulling ballots out from under the table, you saw windows boarded up with cardboard, and you saw people talking about the numbers not really matching or not really working right. I said, okay, something's wrong here. I need to start looking into it. And of course, as a former math teacher, I'm like, let's start looking at the numbers. Let's see, do the numbers in my county match what they're supposed to do? And so we took it down to that local level and started to look at the local level.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

No, absolutely. And I think that's where the rubber meets the road is at the local level. I think a lot of people assume that, you know, help's coming from Washington, you know, as long as I vote for who's going to be the next president, that's all I really need to think about or care about. But that's not the case as we've discovered.

SPEAKER_03 3:34

Right. So one of the things that I the very first thing that I did is I said, okay, does my county number match what the state number does? That's a very simple match. You should be able to see that, you know, this number matches this number, but it didn't match. And that's what was crazy to me because I'm thinking, okay, if if you have money in the bank, you want the money to match what you expect to be there. Whatever you take out and whatever you put in should match. But the numbers from the county to the state, they weren't matching. And it wasn't just in my county and it was, it was in multiple counties.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

When you say numbers, what numbers are you referring to?

SPEAKER_03 4:09

So I'm looking at the numbers for how many people voted.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

So if there were 5,000 people in the county, the state should reflect the same number for that county. If there's a different number, if this is a bigger county and it has 10,000 people in it, then there should be 10,000 on the state record as well for that. But not only that, you can even dig deeper and look into the names because in Texas, they post the names of every person that voted each day. So you can look at do the names match? And even there, we were finding that the names weren't matching either. The state had names on its list that were not on the county list, and vice versa.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Okay, let's go there because that's a big deal. So you're saying that there are people who cast ballots, but they no longer like they weren't even on the voter rolls, or were they like explain that a little bit?

SPEAKER_03 5:05

Well, that's a good question because it hasn't been explained to me yet why that can happen. But what's supposed to happen is when you go in, you're you check into a poll book, and that poll book has your name on it. And when you take it in, uh when you get your ballot, then you um you go take sorry, you go cast your ballot. And once you've cast your ballot, you know, they have a record of you voting. Well, that's good, but that is at the polling location. Then that name goes up to the county. When the county goes up, your name is still on that list, and then it goes to the all of those are collected from each county and it goes to the state. So you would expect that from that polling location to the county, to the state, that the names would be the same all the way up that process.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 5:53

But they're not.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Wow. Wow. You know, you you talked about something when you come in. Um you talked about a poll book. What what exactly is a poll book?

SPEAKER_03 6:06

So I think the easiest way to think of a poll book is how they used to do it in the olden days before we had computers. They had a list of who all was supposed to vote in that precinct. So I actually had pieces of paper with the names of who all is eligible to vote in that precinct for that election. If you moved out of the county or you moved out of that precinct, then your name was taken off. And if you moved in, your name was added to that list. Nowadays we use electronic poll books. So we don't have the paper poll books anymore. You actually go in and there's a computer sitting on the desk. And when you go in to register to vote that day or to check in to vote, they have your name in the computer and they check you in that way.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Wow. So is there just one company that provides poll books nationwide, or is there multiple companies?

SPEAKER_03 6:56

There's actually multiple companies. Um, and some of them are better than others. I I will tell you the one in my county that we were using at first, they actually went out of business. And what happened there is they they were running out of money as a company. And so they started actually, I would call it extorting the counties for more money. And so um they ended up going out of business and telling the counties, hey, we're not going to be able to function in Texas anymore. And that led to a situation in my county where because of that poll book was going away, we had to get a new one and we had to do it really fast because we had a new another election coming up.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

So in your county, do people that come with these poll books, like I think in most counties, like if you're gonna come do a project, a building project, or you're gonna come whatever the case may be, like you have a bidding process and then you have multiple vendors, and then there's a period where they kind of sift through who's gonna give you the best contract. Did any of that happen in your county or was there?

SPEAKER_03 8:00

So I'm not sure how that process went because it had to be done fast. But what happened is they did their own research in the background. The election administrator decided that, you know, he did his own research and then came to the commissioner's court with his recommendation for the poll book. And of course, that has to be approved by the commissioner's court. So every county has their own court that they that kind of oversees what the funding is in the county, and that's the commissioner's court.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Right. And you had mentioned something um before this that y'all were looking into the contract, and you uh you had got some volunteers together. What did you find in the contract?

SPEAKER_03 8:43

So I have a team of volunteers that regularly look at the commissioner's court agenda every week. They're constantly looking for what is going to be put on the commissioner's court agenda, which is a great thing for every citizen and every county to do. They need to find form a volunteer team of uh that will be monitoring those uh agendas from the commissioner's court. Well, one week they saw that they they always flag the things that are coming from the elections department. And so they saw that there was gonna be a new poll book because of the discontinuation of the former one. So we started looking into the contract, we started looking at, well, what is this new poll book? We we pulled out some of their um, we went to their website, we looked at some of the the schematics and things that were gonna be involved in this particular poll book, and we noticed that there was something strange in there that our county had never experienced. They wanted to move from a wet signature to an electronic signature. Now, most people may not know what a wet signature is, but that's just pen and ink on a piece of paper. And our county had always used pen and ink when you sign in at the polling location to check in to get your ballot. They wanted to switch to an electronic format for signature verification. If you have ever been to a grocery store, you know that your signature on that little pull pad or the electronic pad that is up there does not look anything like Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Sometimes it's just you just put a squiggly line.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Yeah, you just kind of squiggle on there. And and that even the commissioners were surprised when we brought this to their attention. So commissioner's court comes up after this weekend of researching all of this. And this was from Friday to Monday afternoon. So we had to do this over the weekend. So we get up there, I say, okay, I'm gonna go up there and I'm gonna tell them that we don't want to move to electronic signatures. We want to keep our wet signatures. And when I did my three-minute speech, which is all you get time for, the commissioners started looking at each other and they were like, whoa, whoa, time out. What's happening here? They were not aware that we were gonna be moving to an electronic signature. And so what happened is they started looking at each other, started asking questions. They said, Hey, uh, election administrator, can you please come up here and we want to ask you a few questions? And so they asked the election administrator some questions. And then they said, Is there a way for you to go and make some phone calls and find out if we can keep the wet signatures? And the election administrator said, sure, I'll go and check and see if I can do that. It was gonna be a really long meeting that day. So they had a lot of things on the agenda. So there was plenty of time for him to go and find out whether there was gonna be an opportunity to switch to going back to the wet signatures instead of the electronic pull pad. And sure enough, at the end of the day, he came back. He said, yes, we can do this, we can keep the wet signatures, which was amazing. I was so, so happy in that moment because not only as a just a regular citizen, I was going up to present my idea or my thoughts on this particular subject, not only that, but they actually listened and they they got more information and they made the right decision. So they did take a vote. We did get to keep the wet signatures, and not only that, at the end of the meeting, what happened is all of the commissioners came up and gave me high fives, like literally gave me high fives. It was amazing. So, and they and they thanked me for coming up there and and pointing out something that they just weren't aware of. It was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Man, that's awesome. And that just kind of shows you that like a citizen being involved, taking action, and showing up can make a difference. Being aware. I want to I want to go back on this wet signature versus electronic signature. Um is there a we talked about the squiggly line and checking out, but what is the vulnerability? Like, why is that so important to have a wet signature versus electronic signature? I don't know that the the average citizen out there understands why that's a could be a potential vulnerability.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

So when you check in to get your ballot, I don't know that most people understand that they're actually signing a real signature. It's like a a legal document that they are who they are. I am saying that I am this person and this is my ballot. So there's actually legal language on on the poll pad or on the on the if there if it's a paper, uh play uh a piece of paper that you're signing on. You're you're signing a legal affidavit that you are who you are. And so to me, you would want to have a legal signature on that, not just a squiggly line.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Right.

SPEAKER_03 13:40

And the vulnerability there is too, that a squiggly line doesn't prove that I am who I am. Anybody can go up there and do a squiggly line.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Right. That was that was kind of my thinking, is that somebody could falsify or act like there's somebody else, and just with that signature, you would never know. Right. You could never you could never verify. No, that's really good. Um, so let's move into something else. I want to talk about um register of ballots. Um for somebody out there in the audience that's never heard of that. What is a register of ballots?

SPEAKER_03 14:16

So a register of ballots is a chain of custody document. Um, so you're wanting to keep track of something from start to finish. So when you're thinking about a register of ballots, it's keeping track of your ballots. How many ballots were sent to a polling place, how many were used, and how many are sent back to the elections office. And not only is this a very important document, but even the Secretary of State on the very top of the form says this is the most important document collected from the election judges on election day. And the the is underlined, it's all capitalized, and it's bolded. So it is a very important document that you want to make sure that it's done right.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yeah, and so you started pulling records on these, and you noticed something was off. What did you find?

SPEAKER_03 15:15

So since it's the most important document, I thought let's start there and start going back to the numbers and seeing does everything match here? And you know, obviously you're gonna give a little grace for you know, people fleeing, or you know, maybe for some reason one ballot wasn't accounted for. But really, every it's like money. You want to make sure you know where every penny went. But what I so I collected these, all of these, you have to do a public information request to get these records. And so I did that.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

What's a public information request?

SPEAKER_03 15:49

It's basically just asking your county for whatever records that you are interested in receiving. And a lot of times it's just an online form that you just say, I've been requesting these documents, and they are public documents that the Secretary of State says are supposed to be available to the public.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:05

So um, so I requested these documents, and uh what I found was that I quit I requested them for 2020. Um that was the first election that I requested them for. There were 102 polling locations in this county, and when I requested them, I only got 31 of the forms. So I thought, okay, well, maybe there's just a little mistake here. They just, you know, forgot to give me some, so I'll ask again. I'm supposed to be getting 102. Why am I only getting 31? And basically was notified that they didn't have the other ones.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

They didn't have the other ones, they didn't have the other ones. This is the most important document that you're supposed to get. And the county didn't have them.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

They didn't have them. So I said, okay, well, if you don't have them, then I'm gonna go ahead and just try to reconcile the ones that you do have. And even out of those 31, there were 6,412 unaccounted for ballots in that in that election.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

That's crazy. So this one county had 102 polling locations. This is the most important document when you I guess close out a polling location on election, this is where they verify.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

And then they didn't have all of them. They were missing over half. Two-thirds. Two-thirds. And then even the ones that you did comb through, the ones that you did receive, how many votes were unaccounted for?

SPEAKER_03 17:38

Six thousand two six thousand four hundred and twelve.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

So so what does that mean when they say unaccounted for?

SPEAKER_03 17:45

It means that the form was not filled out properly with proper chain of custody for those ballots. So and I can I don't remember the exact number off the top of my head, but it was about a a thousand from one polling location that didn't even remember, didn't have the right numbers on their register of ballots. So they couldn't account for a thousand ballots. I don't know what happened to those ballots. They're not just pieces of paper, these are blank ballots, and nobody could account for where they were.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Wow. Wow. That's a big deal.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

It is a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

That's huge. That's just one county.

SPEAKER_03 18:26

One county, one election. So I decided to go a little further, and I actually did a whole investigative report from 2020 to 2023. All of the elections in there, whether it was a municipal election or a um, you know, a general election, just I did all the elections from 2020 to 2023. And over that time period in this one county, they were missing forms at first, but once that was pointed out, they started to find those other missing forms. Uh, and they they accounted for all of the forms, but they were still missing, uh, they still had unaccounted for ballots.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

So what how did have they fixed this? Have they rectified it? What did you what did you do? What did they do with this information?

SPEAKER_03 19:13

So in that investigative report, we found over 75,000 unaccounted for ballots over that time period. And then I said, okay, well, there I I went to the elections office, I informed them of the findings. Um nothing happened there. And so I ended up filing a formal complaint with the Secretary of State with all of the evidence, with all of the documents, um, everything. Everything was there for them to look at. Took a while for them to get back to me with an answer on that complaint, but basically they said yes, they need to do better training in that county. And this was in September of 2024, so right before the the presidential election of 2024.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

So the Secretary of State, that is the office that oversees all the elections in the state of Texas. So you take this information to them and they didn't do an investigation, they didn't look into it, they just kind of came back after a while and said, Yeah, they need to do a better job of training.

SPEAKER_03 20:22

Well, theoretically, they did take my report and read it and go through it. So it did take them a while to do that. So I, you know, I assume that they did that. But once they did that, yes, their response was they need to do better training.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

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SPEAKER_03 21:59

There's always a possibility. Possibility. If you don't know where they're at, then somebody could use them. Now, I don't want to blame anybody for doing that because they don't know that that's the case. But if it's the most important form, they need to be accounted for.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Absolutely. Wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

But there's more to the story if you want to hear that.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Yeah, I would love to hear that. Yeah, keep going.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

So um, so 2024 happened at the presidential election, the general election in November. And I decided to see did they do any better after their training? Well, I knew they weren't going to do better during that training because the training, I went to the training, and the training consisted of make sure you cross your T's and dot your I's because people are watching and we want to make sure that we're doing it right. They didn't go through and say, okay, on this line, you fill out this number, and on this line, you fill out this number, and then you subtract, and then this number should match here. They didn't do any of that. It was terrible training.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 23:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 23:04

And so because of that, I went and did the numbers again. And it was one of the worst that I had ever seen in the 2024 election of uncounted ballots in the county that had been told to do better training.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

So it got worse.

SPEAKER_03 23:19

It got worse.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

Is it still that way today, or did you guys because I filed a second complaint with the Secretary of State's office, and I said, okay, it didn't get better after you told him to do better training. And this time the Secretary of State came back and said, it's an election irregularity. This is a statutorily, which means legally required document. It's in our Texas law that this is supposed to be collected and filled out. And the Secretary of State is calling it an election irregularity.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

So so it's a law.

SPEAKER_03 23:56

It's a law.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

And they failed to uphold the law. Is that what we're saying?

SPEAKER_03 24:04

I'm just saying that they're calling it an election irregularity. And so in order to for this to be fixed, we need more eyes on it. We need more people looking into their own counties, and we need people to go check out their own register of ballots and see if they match.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

And if they don't, then we need to bring that, they need to file a complaint, just like I did.

SPEAKER_02 24:25

Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:25

Normal citizens filing complaints. And if you need help, you know, we're happy to help you at Citizens Defending Freedom.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Yeah, no, I mean that's um Yeah, this is why it's so important to get involved. Absolutely. It m it makes all the difference in the world when uh just even just one person like yourself steps up and starts looking into these things and and holding, you know, elected officials accountable. Absolutely. Right. It just blows my mind that um that that happened and it's still kind of not totally resolved.

SPEAKER_03 24:58

Right. And the other thing that happened after that is that they started charging me for records. So that's all I haven't gotten records for a while because I'm in the middle of a cost complaint. So what a cost complaint is is that I'm complaining that they're charging me for things that they never charged me for in the past. And they're not only charging me, they're charging citizens all across the state. In one county, they charged $14,000. In other counties, it's free.

unknown 25:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

How does that work? Are you talking about like putting in a public information request?

SPEAKER_03 25:33

Public information request.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

And was it free before? And then they then they just suddenly started charging.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

You know, investigation, they started charging.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Why why do you think they would start charging you?

SPEAKER_03 25:46

I don't know, but it definitely is a deterrent for regular citizens to be able to monitor their elections and keep these to keep them accountable.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Are those records supposed to be free to the public?

SPEAKER_03 26:01

Like if you're submitting it, the law is unclear. And that's something that hopefully in the next legislative session that we can change. Right now it says $50, but it's not clear whether that's $50 per record, $50 flat fee, $50, or you can just waive it, or you can charge whatever you want. I mean, it could be per line. I'm going to charge $50 per line. It's not clear. So we need to clear that up in the legislature next session.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

Why why is that important? Like, why do unequal costs matter for election transparency? Like in terms of like getting these documents.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

So just like everything else, you wouldn't want to be charged more for something than I'm being charged.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:44

So if I'm getting it for free and you're getting it for $10,000, you wouldn't really think that was very fair, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:50

It kind of sounds, it sounds like a deterrent. It is a deterrent. Like it sounds like if somebody's looking into something you don't want them to see or you don't want them to find, you're saying, Well, I'll give it to you, but you're gonna have to pay. And then most people, if they don't have that kind of money, they just give up at that point.

SPEAKER_03 27:07

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Wow. Wow. Well, let's uh let's shift into another topic. Um, this is something that I've learned, and uh it's about logic and accuracy test.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

And so can you explain what is a logic and accuracy test?

SPEAKER_03 27:31

Yes, I think so. And so basically it's a test to make sure that the machines are working properly before an election and that the ballots are are properly formatted so that you know, if if Joe is supposed to get a uh a vote, then uh he does get the vote. So they're just testing ballots to make sure that they're working properly.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

How do they uh how do they do that? Like pretend um pretend I've I've never voted, right? I have no idea what goes on before an election day. And so how how does how does this work?

SPEAKER_03 28:07

So it's it's it's supposed to be before performed before the election. And so and it is a public test. So the public is invited to come. Most people don't even know that it exists. But if you look on your uh county website, usually on the elections page, if you have one in your county, you will find uh the a public notice that this is gonna be taking place on a certain date, which you know, be watching. Once you find that date, then go and attend. It's usually uh it varies from county to county. So some counties it's gonna be one day, it might be just a couple hours, or it might be a multiple days. So I'd never been to one. I went to my first one in October of 2022. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna find out what this, you know, I'm still digging, finding these problems, and thinking, okay, well, let's go to the public test and see what happens there. Um, we took some friends with us because we were like, okay, we've never been, but these people over here have been, so maybe they can help us understand what's gonna be happening at this public logic and accuracy testing. So when we go, we are also taking the law with us because it's codified in Texas law that this public logic and accuracy test is supposed to take place and what is supposed to be done during that testing. So spells it out exactly what's supposed to happen. We get there, and the first thing we do is that you know, the election administrator introduces himself, says, This is who I am, this is what's gonna take place today, and says, Okay, let's go. And we say, Okay, wait a minute, stop. The first line on the law says that you're supposed to have a testing board. Who's on the testing board here? We just want to write down the names so we know who's gonna be in charge here. Um, oh, you want a testing board? Okay, who wants to be on the testing board today? That's how that went. That's how it started.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Aren't they supposed to be the ones that know all this stuff?

SPEAKER_03 30:04

You would think that they would choose people that were technical and that had studied this stuff and knew what the machines were supposed to do and how they're supposed to be tested. But that day, they just chose people off the floor, volunteers that just showed up.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 30:20

And there were other things that happened that day that were not good. They're also supposed to do what's called a hash validation. So the hash validation is basically making sure that the software is working properly, that it hasn't been mucked with or altered in any way. So, you know, you have your machine, but inside of your machine, you have software that's running that machine. And you want to make sure that the software that's on that machine is what's supposed to be and not anything else.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Right.

SPEAKER_03 30:51

So this is where you get into the we don't, you know, people that don't trust the machines because they don't know what's inside of it. Well, the only way that we can see it in Texas is to do this matchup. So we're matching, okay. This is the it's it's a little technical, but basically all the software comes down to a series of numbers and letters, and it's like a serial number for that, um, for that software. And when it's released from the factory, that's it comes with a certain serial number. And you know, that is the validation for that's what's supposed to be on there. So when it's in the elections office, they test it and they say, Do we still have the same software on our machine that came from the factory? Basically, does it still match? And so that's they're supposed to do that match in the public testing. So I asked them, Are you gonna do the hash validation here in the public testing? And I was told, No, we already did it three days ago. And I was like, Well, it's supposed to be done in the public testing. Oh, we're not gonna do that today.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Do they test every machine?

SPEAKER_03 32:03

They don't. That was something we found out later on because we noticed that they were only testing like five or six machines. And you know, this is one of the larger counties in Texas. We have hundreds and hundreds of machines. And so I, you know, I thought, okay, well, they're only gonna test like five or six machines. This is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

So yeah, exactly. So what's to say that even this those five machines they make, you know, this is just me. I'm not saying this is what happens, but what's to say that they just don't make sure that those five machines work flawlessly?

SPEAKER_03 32:40

Well, not only that, later on at a subsequent logic and accuracy test, we asked. We said, where are these five machines going to be deployed into the field? And they said, they're not. They're basically going back in the closet. So we're pulling out the machines, we're testing them, and then we're putting them back in the closet. And not only that, we started looking at the asset tags, which is basically the serial number on each machine, and we found out that they were pulling out the same five machines every time and testing those same five machines.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

So everything that was being deployed out into the field was never being tested with this hash validation test.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

So they were using the same five machines every election.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

And just to test. To test. Not rotating out different machines, not deploying those, just using the same. Okay, that's that's wild.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

That's wild. Because that just goes to the point we talked about. Is then if you're using the same five machines, how are you making sure, first of all, even just five machines, wouldn't you want to just test more than that? I feel like that's a small batch for such a large election.

SPEAKER_03 33:56

It is.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

And then you could just say, okay, the same five machines are good, but that doesn't represent the hundreds or even the thousands of machines that could be deployed in a large county.

SPEAKER_03 34:07

Correct. But the testing does take time. And so, you know, it I I want to give the election administrator some grace there because they do have a lot on their plates. Yeah. The thing is, is that really the whole logic and accuracy test, it's not, it's kind of a dog and pony show. It really is supposed to make you feel like the machines are secure, but it really doesn't do that. When you go, you find out that it's that's really not securing our election by having that test.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Right. I mean, sometimes I feel like we're all caught up in a giant dog and pony show. And I think this is why people that are paying attention and are saying, like, hey, we don't trust the machines. Right. Because of even just processes like this. I mean, it just it doesn't even make sense.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

Yeah. And what people really want are just accuracy in their elections. They want to make sure the numbers are matching, they want transparency, so they want to be able to see how the process works. And then they also want accountability for those that are breaking the law.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

Right. That's huge. Um so I want to I want to kind of step back for a second and just shift gears because we've been, you know, focused in on um the idea of machines and e-poll books and these different things, but I don't think what you're describing is necessarily just election issues. I mean, we're we're talking about um integrity, uh, we're we're talking about um trust, right? We're talking about all these different elements, and I I think from a biblical standpoint, this matters. And so as a believer, you know, those those are important virtues to me, those are important biblical principles. And I just think that there's a lot of that missing um with our elected officials, uh, with the election process in general. And so just thinking about election integrity in that vein, you know, um, why does this matter so much?

SPEAKER_03 36:33

So one of the reasons why this matters is because it's is because it matters to the Lord. In his word, he talks about that he abhors or hates unequal weights and measures. So if you think about scales and how they used to weigh things, um, you know, you don't want somebody putting their thumb on the scale and cheating you out of what you deserved. You know, if the gold is supposed to weigh this much, but I like put my thumb on the scale and I only give you a little bit less, then that's not fair, right? Right. So we want fairness in our elections. And that's one thing. The other thing, as far as like keeping people accountable, the Lord talks about that too in Romans 13. The whole purpose of the law is to deter people from doing wrong.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Absolutely. No, well said, and talking about accountability. Let's talk about in this last legislative session. You put forward a bill called SB six eighteen. Can you talk about the bill, what was in it, and why you decided to put that forward?

SPEAKER_03 37:47

Yeah. So SB 618 was a bill to add a penalty to an already existing law. And the law that's already on the books is unlawful altering of election procedures. So it's not you're not supposed to unlawfully alter anything that's already in the election code. Makes sense, right? It's a great law. Sounds wonderful. The only problem was it had no penalty on it. So if you looked at that whole section of the law, and if anybody wants to go look it up, it's um Texas Election Code 276.019. If you go look at that law, it's the only provision in that section that does not have a penalty on it. Everything else in that section has a penalty. So when I saw that, I thought, whoa, that's crazy. That's a great law. We don't want people to unlawfully alter anything against the election code. So there needs to be a penalty on it.

SPEAKER_02 38:42

Right.

SPEAKER_03 38:43

And not only that, I was hearing from different people around the state where they were saying things like they were hearing their election officials saying things like, oh, as long as there's no penalty on there, I don't have to worry about that.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

That's crazy. So, okay. So we're talking about election integrity. And you have something on the books in the law that says you can't alter that, but there's no penalty if you do.

SPEAKER_03 39:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

That that doesn't make sense to me.

SPEAKER_03 39:14

No.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

I I don't understand how that works. Like, why would that even be if if there's no consequence for breaking the law, why have the law?

SPEAKER_03 39:23

Exactly. So we went into that legislative session with a kind of our mantra of laws without penalties are just suggestions. And that's really what it is. It's just a suggestion. You can follow it or you don't have to, whichever you want.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Yeah. So okay. So going, um how did that process go? Did it did it take off? Did it did it pass?

SPEAKER_03 39:48

Did it so it started off really well. Actually, I filed it two sessions ago. Um, so that was the beginning of it. I was a little late in the process, so I didn't get it very far. But um, but then this last session, we reintroduced it. I had authors in both the House and in the Senate, which is a great thing to do, to carry those those bills forward on each side. So then when it gets to the, you know, to the last process, you can reconcile it and it all goes great. Um, and so I, you know, I went to the different authors. They asked me, they suggested that maybe I might want to go talk to the Secretary of State's office and make sure that they were okay with it. So I thought, yeah, that's a great idea. I should go and get their input as well. Did that. They were, they said we don't have any issues with it. They said they suggested that I go talk to the attorney general's office and see if they had any issues with it. They looked at it, they said nope, no issues with it. So I was flying high at this point. I was thinking, okay, this is gonna go well for me and for this bill and for the people of Texas. And so um went and got to committee, which is the first step of it. And so goes to this committee in the Senate. There's nine members on the committee. I was invited testimony with a couple of other ladies, and we all gave our testimony. It passed nine to zero. I'm thinking, awesome! This is going awesome, and we're gonna get this all the way through. It gets put on the intent calendar, and the intent calendar means basically this is going through. You know, it this should go quick, and we should get this off that's where you want it to go. That's where you want it to go.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 41:28

And so it was on the intent calendar, but it was stuck, got stuck for a couple of weeks there. And I started hearing that there was a problem with the bill.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

What what what was the problem? I thought everything was moved. What was the problem?

SPEAKER_03 41:46

I it was confusing to me too, because I'm thinking, what's the problem? I checked with everybody, everybody was fine with it. Apparently, some uh some people were a little upset that I was holding the Secretary of State accountable in that bill too.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

Who was upset?

SPEAKER_03 42:03

What should I say? Do you want me to say?

SPEAKER_01 42:07

I mean, like who like who who would be? I mean, I I guess I'm asking because if if you're just trying to put accountability into a law, isn't that reasonable? Isn't that what people should want? Isn't that what our elected officials should want?

SPEAKER_03 42:25

And even when I took the bill to the Secretary of State, which who was going to be held accountable, they had no issues with the bill. Because it those provisions were in there when I took it to them. So somebody high up had a problem with it. Let's say it that way.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

Do you want to say who that person was? You can.

SPEAKER_03 42:47

It was Dan Patrick.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick.

SPEAKER_03 42:50

Lieutenant Governor Ben Dan Patrick.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

Why?

SPEAKER_03 42:53

That's what I was being told.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 42:56

And not only that, I had an opportunity to be on a podcast or on a webinar with him later on. And he said, he, you know, there were opportunity to ask questions, and I I asked the question, I said, what's the what's wrong with SB618? Why isn't it moving forward? And he he said the author needs to change it.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Change what? Remove the accountability.

SPEAKER_03 43:19

Remove the accountability for the Secretary of State. And when I said, Well, what if the Secretary of State is doing something wrong? He deflected and said, Jane Nelson would never do that. The law is not there for good people. The law is there for bad people. And I'm not making any kind of determination about that, about a particular secretary of state, but we don't make laws for the good people. We make them to deter the bad people.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Right.

SPEAKER_03 43:49

So in the future, if there is somebody that's not following the law that's in the Secretary of State position, that law needs to be there.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

Right. I agree. So ultimately, what happens?

SPEAKER_03 44:01

Ultimately, it it it died. Um ultimately it went through a process. It did pass the Senate with that, with the Secretary of State provisions removed. So it still had some teeth. Uh, I still felt like we still should move forward with the teeth that we did have, come back, get, come back and get the rest later. But um, it ended up going over to the House side. The House started their process because they knew there was stuff going on in the Senate and they wanted to see how that was going to shake out first. And it made it all the way up to the second reading at midnight, and the bell rang, the clock struck midnight, and just as it's being read, SB 618, the clock struck 12 and it was dead.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 44:51

Yeah, it was very disheartening.

SPEAKER_01 44:53

But do let me ask you this. You think that was intentional?

SPEAKER_03 44:59

Yes, I do. It was delayed in the House for two or three weeks in the House Elections Committee. And there's one person that's responsible for that, and that's the committee chair.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

And at the stroke of midnight, the stroke of midnight. The timing of that.

SPEAKER_03 45:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

The bell rings as they're starting to read it. And that's it.

SPEAKER_03 45:25

And that's it.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 45:28

But I'm still hopeful because we have another session coming up in January, and I'm gonna take this bill again, and we're gonna probably make it stronger, hopefully, and get in some of the things that we want. And with the help of all the citizens making their voices known, we can get it across the finish line.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Well, yeah, I think uh I think we need to put a lot of people and support behind this. Absolutely. Because any anytime you have a bill that's holding people accountable just to do their job. Yeah. I mean, and as you've laid out, elections are are the most important I think civic duty an American can do. That's where your voice that's where your voice is heard. That's where you cast your ballot. That's where we put people in office. And we when and we've got this whole thing backwards, I think, today. I think that politicians think that like we're there to serve them, but they've forgotten that we're a constitutional republic and that we uh our elected officials are there to serve we the people.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

I mean, Article 6, section four of the of the Texas Constitution says that we are supposed to have the elections are by the people, and that it is the legislature's job to make regulations to detect and punish fraud. That's their job. They need to do it.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Right. Yep, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

And one other thing about that, I just want to say that I consider our ballot, that's our voice. It is more important than money, it determines everything in your life.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

Right.

SPEAKER_03 47:15

And I know a lot of people we talked about this earlier, that a lot of people want to, you know, look at the federal level and all of the problems that are up there, but there's a lot of problems locally that we need to be looking into, and that's where we need to start holding the accountable at the local level.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

I agree. And it's so doable. I mean, you've you've seen these local races when we start looking into them, the the margin for victory is sometimes 50 votes, sometimes 100 votes. And I think if if Christians, I'm speaking to Christians, if we would come out and we would mobilize, if the Church of the Living God would come out, register to vote, run God-fearing people for office, and then mobilize our congregations, we could take back every school board, every city council, every commissioner's court across this country, and we could probably do it in two election cycles. But that's where we have to step up, and that's where we have to take responsibility and get involved. Well, Debbie, this is this has been great. Um I guess I want to, you know, for the person listening right now who wants to do something, who's hearing this and they get fired up, um, but doesn't know where to start. What would you, from your experience, what would you recommend to them?

SPEAKER_03 48:46

Find an organization like Citizens Defending Freedom. I mean, uh contact us and let us know that you're interested in working in elections. Not only that, you know, we you know, we can mobilize and help you to get started. And but really it's to churches. The churches need to get involved. Just like you said, if the churches would get involved and we start forming teams of people that can start to watch, start to hold accountable, start to bring that transparency, start to bring that accountability, that's gonna be where you're gonna find real impact. So just get in contact with us. That's what I'd say.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Absolutely. No, and and I say, you know, you're um, I really appreciated, you know, your story and how you got started because you were just a mom.

SPEAKER_03 49:37

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

And you just said, hey, I'm I'm gonna look into this. Yeah. Something's something's not right. And you just started, I call it suiting up and showing up.

SPEAKER_03 49:46

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 49:47

You started showing up to your commissioner's court, you started looking in, connecting with your election administrator, and just really just took action.

SPEAKER_03 49:58

And the Lord brought people around me to help. And that that's when you when you really feel the impact of things, is when you have a team of people around you that are supporting what you're doing, and you're supporting them as well. So just it it really makes a big difference.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Absolutely. Well, Debbie, thank you so much. This has been great. I've enjoyed having you on the show, and I think this is gonna really open a lot of eyes and uh touch a lot of people in a positive way to hopefully start getting involved in election integrity.

SPEAKER_03 50:30

I hope so too.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

Thank you. Well, I hope you got a lot out of this episode. Debbie and I are about to go into the red zone. This is where we go and we talk about things that we otherwise can't or would normally not talk about on a regular episode. If you'd like to join us on the other side, sign up and become a Patreon member on our account. Alright, Debbie. Welcome to the red zone.