Baptist Ministers Association of Houston * Houston Area Pastor Council * Houston Ministers Against Crime * AME Ministers

Alliance of Houston/Gulf Coast * Northeast Ministers Alliance * South Texas Full Gospel Baptist Fellowship * South Texas District of the Assemblies of God * National Hispanic Christian Leadership

Conference

A THEFT TO REPORT: VOTING RIGHTS OF HOUSTON CITIZENS ARE THE VICTIM OF AN ATTEMPTED SCHEME BY HOUSTON MAYOR AND CITY ATTORNEY.

The City Charter is very clear that only the City Secretary has the authority and duty to validate signatures on a referendum petition - and Anna Russell did so. On August 1 confirming she in fact had “checked” 19,177 signatures and validated 17,826 of those (a 93% success rate), then discontinued counting since the minimum required signatures of 17,269 had been exceeded.

We have confirmed as per the following email from the office of the Texas Secretary of State that “a judge” has the jurisdiction to make a decision on the validity of a notarized document. Therefore City Attorney David Feldman has very questionable legal authority to invalidate even one petition, let alone over one half of the petitions submitted.

In addition, Mr. Feldman used illegitimate standards to invalidate 11,245 signatures in particular for “Illegible Circulator Name” and “did not sign his/her name” (ALL is the latter category were signed by either cursive, partial cursive or print). Also in reference to the SOS email, a circulator may sign…

The churches and citizens who worked tirelessly to gather over 50,000 signatures in 30 days had no choice but to file a legal challenge to such an offense against our Constitutional rights. The fact that the city, using our own tax dollars, has engaged three of the largest law firms in the city against its own citizens is adding insult to injury.

Law Firms fighting the citizens Pro Bono*…?

• Haynes and Boone• Susman Godfrey• Fulbright & Jaworski

* - claimed by law firms; unable to verify due to city’s refusal to respond to information request

These firms have now engaged in a “shock and awe” against us by issuing frivolous subpoenas to multiple citizen circulators and five of our pastors with demand to produce a burdensome level of documentation irrelevant to the facts of this case.

We ask that our city council members as representatives of the people openly and immediately demand answers to the above issues from Mayor Annise Parker and City Attorney David Feldman.

What other laws must this administration ignore or violate for council members to speak out?

City Council contact info is posted at:www.nounequalrights.com

Baptist Ministers Association of Houston * Houston Area Pastor Council * Houston Ministers Against Crime * AME Ministers Alliance of Houston/Gulf

Coast * Northeast Ministers Alliance * South Texas Full Gospel Baptist Fellowship * South Texas District of the Assemblies of God * National

Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference