Here Comes the Judge

As I’ve grown older and wiser, I still haven’t wised up about joking with dated material. Last year, when physical therapists were torturing me after shoulder surgery, I would start to sing Roxanne, hoping they would stop the torture for some red light therapy. The PT techs had no idea what I was talking about. They had never heard of The Police or their hit song, Roxanne. They ignored my suggestions about using Red Light Therapy, preferring a more active, painful physical approach. For that, I’m grateful. My shoulder has healed nicely, and I’m back in the gym almost daily because I don’t have anything better to do.

Except during the election season because I volunteered to be an Election Judge. Here Comes the Judge is America’s first Meme and was a staple of the old Rowman and Martins Laugh-In show, which was popular in the late 60’s. It’s the first thing I thought of when a Hidalgo County Election Supervisor I call Neo, called me to ask if I’d like to be a judge instead of a poll worker. Neo isn’t the supervisor’s real name, but he only communicates to me through texts, which for some reason seem Matrix-like.

I volunteered for election duty, hoping it would instill some long-lost confidence in our civic governance. I am terrified that the Democrats will steal this election, which, given the disaster of the Biden-Harris years, seems impossible. I live in the Rio Grande Valley, which has long been a Democratic stronghold but is now firmly Trump territory, given his massive appeal to working and middle-class Hispanic men. So, I was interested in seeing how the votes would be tabulated and if there was a chance for voter fraud or other shenanigans.

We don’t have dominion voting machines in the valley; we use Verity Duo voting machines with touchscreen voting that produce paper ballots. Those ballots are then scanned into a separate Duo machine that is not connected to the internet or the voting machines and then end up in a locked ballot box that can only be opened at the county election office. The system seems as fraud-proof as one could make it because the paper ballots are the only thing that counts, and if the hand count varies from the scanner count, then all hell breaks loose at the county election headquarters.

The only organized election fraud in the Rio Grande Valley comes from Politiqueras. These are teams of vote harvesters funded by Democrats that prey on the older Hispanic population in regional colonias, nursing homes, or adult daycare centers. This year, the Texas Office of the Attorney General’s Election Integrity Division is actively hunting these ballot harvesters, so I do not believe they can inject enough bogus ballots into the system to make any difference.

In Texas, there is no electioneering within 100 feet of a polling place, including clothing supporting a specific candidate or political party. I have yet to see a voter show up with a MAGA hat, and I doubt that it will be a problem if one does. Nobody mistakes me for a Harris supporter, and I’m so damn cheerful I doubt anyone will argue with me when I ask that the hat be removed while they vote. The only issue I have had is with college-aged women who want to document everything they do with their cell phones. The dad in me wants to plead with them to wear more clothes because they tend to be grossly overweight. But I simply ask they refrain from taking photographs in the voting area and they pout but put the phones away. There are no policemen assigned to our polling location, and there is no need for them. The voting public in the RGV is friendly, happy, and content with the integrity of the county voting system.

I’ve been checking in voters, and it has been a delightful experience. Voters step up to my table and present their driver’s license. I enter the first four letters of the last name, the first three of their first name, and their date of birth. Their name and address appear 98% of the time, indicating they are registered to vote. A label printer attached to my laptop prints off their name and address, and I paste that into my voters’ log, ask them to verify everything is correct, and sign. A second label contains a bar code that the Verity Duo scan machine reads, which then spits out a six-digit code for use at the ballot machines. The voter enters that code and votes, and when finished, the machine spits out a printed ballot with the voter’s name and information and the votes they have cast.

I remain concerned about voter irregularities throwing the election to the worst Presidential candidate I have ever seen. I am also worried that the deep state will not step aside and accept the will of the American people when they vote President Trump back into office. But I am glad I volunteered to work this election because it restored my faith in my fellow citizens and local government. I doubt I’ll ever have the same degree of confidence in the federal government, but four years of Trump and JD Vance would be a good start.