Emily Belz
World Magazine
Politics | As concern mounts about lapsed Justice Department enforcement of voting rights laws, local groups step up to monitor voting themselves
WASHINGTON—Harris County, the third-largest county in the country and the largest in Texas, appears to have fraud-filled voter rolls, but the federal government didn’t uncover it: A local group funded by “passing the cowboy hat” did.
Catherine Engelbrech-Picassaweb.com
Catherine Engelbrecht, now the president of the watchdog group True the Vote, used to run Engelbrecht Manufacturing, a company that cranks out manufacturing parts. But she has set that life aside, perhaps permanently. With no legal background, she and a team she dubbed “Excel spreadsheet pros” spent the last year investigating voter fraud and released a report in August detailing
thousands of fraudulent registrations—information that the county voter registrar has now submitted to the district attorney.The report drubbed Houston Votes, a group headed by Service Employees International Union employee Sean Caddle, finding that out of 25,000 voter registrations the group submitted, only 7,193 were legitimate new voters. County voter registrar Leo Vasquez said the county appeared to be “under an organized and systematic attack” from Houston Votes. Caddle reportedly fired about 30 employees as a result of the revelations.







































