Rodney Ellis forged 750,000 ballots in an attempt to steal the election away from Donald Trump — or so say the MAGA-nauts.
Ellis supposedly did this dastardly deed all while running Harris County, which includes Houston.
I asked the alleged perp himself, County Commissioner Ellis, how he could possibly forge three-quarters of a million absentee ballots. At eight seconds per signature, it would take a normal human about 200 years to sign them all.
The commissioner, an attorney, said, “I’m too lazy to sign hundreds of thousands of ballots. I'd be nuts."
The ridiculous accusation would all be a laugh, except for an attempted murder and vigilantes armed with AR-15s who appeared at his daughter’s pajama party. It would be a laugh if not for the untold number of Black and Hispanic voters terrorized at ballot dropboxes. A laugh if not for Ken Paxton and his Ku-Kluxxing of the vote.
Watch our five-minute report at Jim Crow Reloaded, Episode 4Jim Crow Reloaded, Episode 4, about the war—and war it is—on mail-in voting.
Rich guy hires bullies for ballots
It begins with President Donald Trump claiming in 2020 that the election would be stolen from him by mail-in ballots.
It’s a charge easy to prove — if you have the ballots with the forged signatures.
Enter an uber-Right-wing uber-rich guy, Steven Hotze, who paid several million dollars to hire some 50 detectives to hunt down those faked ballots.Their target: Ellis, the first Black Commissioner elected to the county board.
It’s not easy to find stolen ballots that don’t exist. That didn’t stop the Hotze posse.
In October 2020, one of Hotze’s henchmen spotted an air conditioning repairman’s truck parked near Commissioner Ellis’s home. Hotze’s gumshoe, Mark Aguirre, followed the repairman’s van, then ran the truck off the road, grabbed the driver and forced him out on the ground, ordering him to kneel, pointing a gun at his head.
The driver, David Lopez-Zuniga, is a lucky man. Highway patrolmen just happened by and saw the gun.
Hotze’s vigilante Aguirre showed the police his badge — he is a retired Houston cop — and said Zuniga was hiding 750,000 stolen ballots in his van.
The cops made Zuniga open the truck’s back door, and there they were: air-conditioning ducts and tools.
Aguirre ratted out his boss, Hotze, and both were charged with assault with a deadly weapon. It looked like justice had caught up with these violent election deniers.
But there’s justice, and then there’s “Texas Justice.”
All charges against Hotze were dropped.
Hotze is on good terms with Texas’ chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Ken Paxton, currently Trump’s candidate for the United States Senate. When Paxton was impeached for corruption by the Texas legislature, Hotze founded the “Stand with Paxton” PAC, funding the AG’s successful campaign to stay in office and stay out of prison.
Whoever thought mail-in ballots would lead to Texas-sized corruption and violence? But the election, Trump correctly noted, was in the mail … as is Paxton’s chance of election this November.
In 2020, Paxton — backed by the Texas Supreme Court, stopped Harris County from sending out more than 2 million mail-in ballots that he claimed were unsolicited. Boldly, proudly, he stated that if he hadn’t stopped Ellis from sending out ballots to Houstonians, Trump would have indeed lost the election. On Steve Bannon’s War Room he boasted:
“If we hadn’t stopped those 2.4 million ballots from being sent out, Donald Trump would have lost the election. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million. And we were able to stop every one of them. Had we not done that, Donald Trump would have lost the election."
PJs, purges and armed protection
The war against mail-in ballots, crucial to Black, Hispanic and American tribal voters, is turning into an armed conflict. But, as voting rights activist Edward Ward says in our video, “only one side is armed.”
After the election in 2020, after Trump went mental over his loss, the MAGA mob went after the commissioner, surrounding his house with armed men screaming the MAGA war cry, “STOP THE STEAL!”
Ellis wasn’t at home, but his daughter was, having a pajama party with her friends Can you imagine? The cops arrived. No arrests.
The commissioner took me for a walk around Houston, proudly showing off his 10-story-high murals and new bike trails. He apologized for having to bring along two serious looking beefy gentlemen packing heat. “Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to go out publicly without protection.”
Welcome to democracy, Texas style, MAGA style.
Ellis is a good political chess player. When Paxton declared war on mail-in ballots and ballot dropboxes, Ellis parried with 24-hourdrive-through polling stations. Later, Texas’ GOP-controlled legislature put an end to Ellis’ brilliant experiment in McDemocracy.
Paxton doesn’t limit himself to ballot-blocking. Paxton also knows he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Texas of becoming Senator if everyone gets to vote. GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to the rescue, suspending the voter registrations of 1.1 million Texans.
But not just any Texans. Over half the voters suspended are in a single county, Travis, home of the Capitol, Austin, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one. Coincidence? I think not.
Let me be clear: Texas has no monopoly on ballot box violence.
So,what are you going to do about it?
Start by signing up at SaveYourVote.org, q project of the Palast Investigative Fund, NAACP Atlanta, RainbowPUSH, Black Voters Matter Fund, SVREP’s Latino Mobilization and the Transformative Justice Coalition.
Send the link to Jim Crow Reloaded to every voter you know.
Check your registration status NOW no matter where you live because Ken Paxton isn’t the only Purge’n General in the USA.
Filmmaker and journalist Greg Palast is author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.You can stream his new film, Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen at GregPalast.com. Produced by Martin Sheen, narrated by Rosario Dawson.
