Tom DeLay may have retired from Congress, but he is still a voting force to be reckoned with.
Texas Democrats are suing to force Tom DeLay to stay on the November ballot — or, more accurately, to block Republicans from naming a successor. For the legal gambit to work, the Dems need to show DeLay, who says he has since moved to Virginia, is in fact still a Texan.
To prove himself a Virginian, DeLay registered to vote in the Lovers’ State (actually a Commonwealth).
But he has yet to take his name off the rolls in Texas: he’s still registered to vote down in Fort Bend County, as you can plainly see on the county’s online records.
DeLay simply needs to notify the county in writing that he won’t be voting around there no more — but he hasn’t done it. “We’re up to do date on what we’re getting in on a daily basis,” the nice lady at the county election administration office said, “and we haven’t received anything from him asking us to cancel.” Until then, she told me, he’s considered “active.”
That certainly won’t help DeLay convince a Texas judge that he’s really a resident of Virginia.
Also — doesn’t it seem like there should be a law against this sort of thing?
Update: Actually, according to a helpful fellow in the Fort Bend County DA’s office, this probably would not be a crime, unless DeLay tried to come back and vote in Texas after having voted in Virginia.