‘Battleground Texas’ Fires Blank at Critics
26th February 2014
The Obama campaign offshoot known as Battleground Texas, which was caught on hidden camera by James O’Keefe allegedly violating state law by encouraging volunteers to copy voters’ private telephone numbers from registration forms into their get-out-the-vote database, has doubled down on the practice, claiming that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott himself sanctioned their conduct in his previously issued legal opinions.
According to Jay Root of the Texas Tribune, Battleground Texas–which is attempting to “turn Texas blue” in helping Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis–now claims that telephone numbers on voter registration forms are “public information.” The group’s lawyer, Graham Wilson, cites Abbott–Davis’s GOP opponent–declaring in 2010 that Dallas County “may not withhold the telephone numbers” from a requestor.
Yet Abbott’s opinion clearly applies only to the county itself. There is also a world of difference between copying telephone numbers directly from voter registration forms–in apparent direct violation of Texas state statute–on the one hand, and filing a formal request through the relevant public authorities, on the other (see below).
Wilson tries to dodge that argument, claiming that a separate opinion from the Texas secretary of state allows volunteers to “copy the relevant information from the application in writing just as you would be able to do if you went to the registrar’s office and pulled a copy of the original application.” The key phrase, however, is “relevant information.” State law does not, apparently, bar copying the name and address from a registration form. It does, however, single out telephone numbers–which Wilson apparently does not try to deny.