Drag to reposition your photo

David Treibs

Joined Groups2

5 Members

remove

Politics and Elections

2 Members

Gillespie County Texas

Outreach/Activism

David Treibs

Report this User

Status Update

David Treibs

February 15, 2026 12:20 pm

Comments about the 2-10-26 Gillespie CEC meeting, where we voted to flip from hand counting to electronic voting machines for early voting. A quorum is 8, not 7. The sole purpose of this emergency... View MoreComments about the 2-10-26 Gillespie CEC meeting, where we voted to flip from hand counting to electronic voting machines for early voting. A quorum is 8, not 7. The sole purpose of this emergency meeting was to flip us away from hand counting to machine counting. It was the 2nd official meeting called for that purpose, and there was also a 3rd, unofficial meeting for the same purpose. Those pushing us to flip from hand counting to electronic voting machines invested huge amounts of time, meetings, and multiple phone calls to pressure us to change. Those of us who participated via Zoom did not attend in person so we could kill the quorum so we could not be flipped back to machines. Up until Tuesday's meeting, the pro-hand-count CEC members had the votes to kill the effort. Unfortunately, someone persuaded a pro-hand-count member. That means that the majority of the Republican Party's election will not be hand counted. Do you understand what happened? Sixty-five to eighty-five percent of the Republican party's votes will NOT be hand counted, thanks to Bruce Campbell and the others pushing it. One of the points the leadership made was the number of volunteers who had signed up to hand count. Those of us who were actively contacting people--instead of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to change our counting method--were going through lists of those who had counted last time, and we were building a good number of counters. We would have had plenty of volunteers by the time the election would have rolled around, 3 weeks after Tuesday's meeting. But, I believe strongly that harping endlessly on the number of volunteers was a pretense to panic the CEC into flipping some or all of the counting back to the machines. With hand counting, no matter how long it takes, we can trust the results. If we only had half the volunteers that we had the last time, then it would have taken twice as long, but the results would still be truthworthy, unlike with the electronic voting machines. But, I think we would have had way more than that. Transparency Electronic voting machines have zero transparency. You have no idea what is happening inside them. You put in the ballot, a flag pops up on the screen, and then nobody knows if or how your votes are counted. You just have to trust that everything is OK. There is no way to verify what happened. At the end of the day the machine prints out a little ticker tape declaring the numbers. You have no way to verify those numbers, unless, of course, you hand count all the ballots, which you are not allowed to do. Verifiable To contrast, with hand counting, on election day, on a precinct level, (early votes are counted in a separate location all together) ballots are sorted into batches of 50, each batch has a tally sheet for each race and each vote, including under and over votes. The counting is done out loud and witnessed by 4 other people, who sign their names in a affidavit swearing to their truthfulness, also supervised by the Election Judge and Alternate. Then there is a tally summary sheet, where all the numbers are totaled and tracked by batch number, with cross checking features. Finally, there is a return sheet where all the batch summaries are totaled, again, with cross checking features. Every document is signed by whoever touched it, and there may also be a counting captain, with the election judge supervising. At each level of paperwork, you can trace back the source of each number to verify how that number was calculated. If necessary, you can go all the way back to the batch of ballots and physically verify the count. You can compel a counter to testify in court, and criminally penalize them if they cheat. If someone is cheating, you have the opportunity to see them doing it. With electronic voting machines, you have none of that. You just have to trust that everything was done correctly; hence, the electronic voting machines are completely non-transparent, with zero verifiability. Machines: Trust “Just Because I Told You So” The only trust factor is that a number of people tell you that you can trust them. Nothing else. The voter, the election judge, the clerks, the elections administrator, nobody can personally verify or observe anything; just hope that all those people are correct who are telling him that it is. Audit The CEC also agreed to do a full audit of the ballots, possibly days or weeks after the election, after the ballots have been sitting in the elections department. Who knows who will have access to them during that time? The audit has nothing to do with hand counting the election; early voting counting will be done on election day by the electronic tabulators. The term "hand count audit" is misleading, making it seem like there is some connection to hand counting the election; there is no connection. Of course the numbers will match, this time. Then we'll hear about how we can trust the machines, and all the fuss about not trusting them is proven to be false. But, these are electronic devices that can be secretly altered, and no one will know what happened. They are fundamentally a non-transparent, untrustworthy process, contrary to what the Texas constitution requires. The whole point of hand counting is that the process in every election must be fully transparent and verifiable, not that there was 1 election where the results were verified, and now we can continue forever with zero transparency and zero verifiability. Remember why we decided to hand count in the first place. Do you remember the election fraud of 2020? Do you remember that the election was stolen from Donald Trump? Do you remember that the Biden junta occupied the federal executive branch, not because of a lack of volunteers, but because of large scale election fraud, including fraud from electronic voting machines? Do you remember that we were all designated domestic terrorists because election fraud enabled that criminal to overthrow the executive branch of the federal government? Do you remember Dominion before all references to it were blocked? That had nothing to do with volunteers. Do you remember the "F" fraud curve, when the counting was stopped so the numbers could be changed, and Trump went from leading, to losing? That wasn't the number of volunteers, that was election fraud. As it now stands, the CEC has voted to return to the machines that helped accomplish all of the above. Our CEC's vote put everything in place that enabled Biden to seize power in the first place. We on the right like to complain about all the RINOs in Congress. They sell out. They have no guts. They don't care about the Constitution. They talk all day about what they are going to do when they are in power, but when they actually have power, they do nothing. The CEC's vote Tuesday cannot be blamed on Dade Phelan, Mike Johnson, John Cornyn, Dustin Burrows, or any of the other weak Republicans. We can't blame Epstein or Soros. We can definitely blame Bruce Campbell, but he didn't do it by himself. Note, there is one solution, for this election, at least. You can vote on Election Day instead of early voting. If you vote on Election Day, your vote will be hand counted. It will be interesting to see how many people know what is happening, understand this concept, and care enough to actually vote on Election Day.

View Less

Be the first person to like this.

Recent Photos

View More Photos