NAACP takes over polling place, advocates for Obama as officials do nothing
Activists with the NAACP took over a Houston polling place and advocated for Barack Obama in clear violation of Texas law, according to a sworn statement by a poll watcher for True the Vote, Breitbart.com reported Saturday.
Eva Rockford, a volunteer with True the Vote, said in her statement that NAACP activists arrived at the 139th precinct polling station at 6719 W. Montgomery Road in Houston at 2:25 p.m. Friday afternoon with about 50 cases of bottled water.
According to Rockford, activists were advocating for Obama as they were handing out water to people in line.
"They were stirring the crowd," she wrote. "The crowd was complaining about the lines. It was getting loud."
Rockford said she complained to polling supervisor Rose Cochran, who ignored her.
"I repeated my statement. She told me that she would handle it. She did nothing. I then went to the AJ and he stood up, walked over to another table and then sat down. I then walked into the waiting room and they were reloading another dolly with more cases of water," she added.
At that point, Rockford said the NAACP activists "began hand picking people out of the lines and began moving these people to the front of the line."
After multiple complaints from voters, Rockford said she received a call from downtown telling her that it was okay for the NAACP to be within 100 feet of the building.
"I told her that the NAACP was inside the building, wearing the NAACP clothing and caps and were handing out water and moving people from the lines to the front of the lines. They said, 'they are in the building', let me talk to Dayan. Dayan was told to tell them to turn their clothes inside out. He went to them and instructed them to do that. They told him that they didn’t have to do that and they weren’t going to stop. They didn’t. They moved people to the front of the line for the rest of the evening," she said.
According to Rockford, authorities did nothing to stop the NAACP from violating state election laws.
"The NAACP basically ran this poll location and the judges did nothing about it," she reported.
Across the country, activists with the NAACP say they are defending the right of minorities to vote, but the Houston incident has many wondering if the group is being given special treatment.
This kind of double-standard is nothing new, according to a blog post by former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams.
"While the NAACP is leading the charge against photo voter identification, Lessadolla Sowers from the NAACP heads off to prison for voting for dead voters," he wrote at PJ Media.
One reader in North Carolina told Examiner that an activist with the organization "was parading up and down in the non-electioneering zone" of his polling place and was eventually removed.
