Bonneville GOP’s use of texting service may violate party’s rule

A recent vote by the Bonneville County Republican party may have violated state GOP rules.

Leaders used new technology for the election and could cause concern among voters.

On May 26, the Bonneville County GOP Central Committee held its reorganization election.

While there, KIFI Local News 8/KIDK Eyewitness News reporter Chelsea Brentzel witnessed something that may violate the state republican party’s voting rules.

They used a texting service to register and count the votes.

“We had to do the texting to speed it up. We’d be here another couple of hours if we didn’t do the texting,” said Doyle Beck, chairman of the GOP Central Committee.

Beck describes the text polling program was used to make the election process go faster and is easier than paper ballots.

The program is called txtwire. Beck’s son, Dan, created it back in 2006.

It allows a large number of people to text in response to a question. Or in this case, cast their votes for the Bonneville County GOP Central Committee elections.

“There’s a lot of tricks of tricks when you do it by hand because someone gives you a ballot, you keep it on your thumb, you can do all kinds of things to do that. This makes it quicker, safer, and more secretive,” said Beck.

But is it really more secretive?

A video advertisement on txtwire’s website says, “I use twtwire to engage large groups when I’m giving presentations and also gather their information. And after they text in their answers I was able to have their numbers on hand to be able to connect with them again after the presentation.”

Dan Beck says it is possible for clients to gain access to phone numbers. But he did not use that function for this election.

“There’s a service you can turn on where when someone texts in. It sends them back a message asking if they would like to be in a subscription group and then if they reply ‘Y’ then they would be put in the list and they can remark it to them,” said Dan Beck.

One woman raised concern about the process in front of all voters on election night. She made it clear that she did not want her phone number connected to her votes.

Beck told her it wouldn’t be. And from what he understood he and his son did not have access to that type of information.

Minutes later, Dan Beck, who helped with the election, conducted a practice voting round. A man came up and asked if his vote came in. Beck’s son pulled up a different screen, typed in the man’s number to check.

“I basically told him that’s not something that’s in this software, but I can login to a compliance software that we have and I can look that up and see if that was, in fact your phone number coming into the system. So I logged out of the polling software and logged into the other one and looked to see if it was and it was,” said Dan Beck.

That’s when multiple phone numbers that were connected to the letter ‘A’ or ‘B’ popped up. It happened just moments after voters were asked to text in an ‘A’ for Donald Trump or ‘B’ for Hillary Clinton.

Chelsea: “I actually saw that it identified the number with the ballot, are you aware of that?”
Doyle Beck: “He could do a search to see if he got the phone number, but he doesn’t know.”
Chelsea: “It had the letter, I saw it.”
Doyle Beck: “It had which letter yea or nay? Well, I don’t know anything about it.”

on Wednesday, Dan Beck responded, “So because we have no spam laws in this country we have to be able to identify that when someone receives a message that they wanted it. And so we monitor that traffic. We monitor it for spam. If someone is receiving a message and their not opted in, that’s spamming and so we can’t allow that by law. So that’s part of other services we offer. But when we’re doing polling that’s not a service that’s offered usually. Someone would have to have access to other systems and other accounts and it’s usually another moderator like myself who would ever be looking at any results like that.”

The Idaho GOP rule book says in article 4 addresses the critical issue of confidentiality.

It states in part, “All officers of the central committee shall be elected by the precinct committeemen and precinct committeewomen at a meeting called by the incumbent county chairman to be held within ten days after the primary election at the county seat. The election of county officers shall be carried out by secret ballot, except in contested races.”

Chelsea:”do you know that’s against state party rules though?”
Doyle Beck:”No, I don’t.”
Chelsea: “Well I can show you. I can show it to you if you want. It’s got to be a secret ballot.”
Doyle Beck:”Well it is secret. I mean if he’s not a voter, he’s not a voter. He looked it up for the guy.”
Chelsea:”So no one has to worry about it?”
Doyle Beck: “No after tonight those numbers are history.”

State Republican party chairman Steve Yates said about the service, “There are two things that must remain sacrosanct in party politics: the right to vote and the integrity of secret ballots. All leadership contests in the Idaho Republican party, at all levels, are decided by secret ballots. That has been standard practice for many years, and for good reason. Paper ballots with monitored counting has been the tried and true method, even for large groups.”

Yates continued, “If the process used did not create a secret ballot, then it is a violation of state party rules. The only way for our party and those associated with our party to have credibility is for there to be strict adherence to our rules.”

“At the end of each poll, they weren’t saved and so there was no way for anyone to know how people voted there other than the results that came out,” said Dan Beck.

Dan Beck says the difference between paper ballots and txtwire is convenience. “It would’ve been the same results in who would’ve won these as delegates, as chair people the only thing is I think it went faster,” said Dan Beck.

If a complaint is filed, a credential’s committee would investigate to see if the election is valid. If the committee finds that it violated the party rules, the election could be thrown out.

If that happens, delegates selected from Bonneville County may loose voting privileges at the state convention, and another election for county central committee positions would take place.

The Idaho Republican convention is in Boise this weekend.