when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others......

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives. It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours. Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason. Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded. "Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs." Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire. Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them. Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul. For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered. We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers. Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence. We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

Romeo Lomas said that technicians from the manufacturer of the voting machines, Election Systems and Software Inc. in Omaha, Neb., visited

Friday, March 31, 2000
Kleberg to post revised race results after vote-count error

By Mary Lee Grant
Caller-Times

Candidates who thought they were winners and those who thought they had lost in April's primary elections will gather at the Kleberg County Clerk's office at 9 a.m. today to see the revised results.
Kleberg County officials said on Wednesday that they had discovered that 1,343 more ballots were counted than cast in the county's Democratic primary.
The discrepancy could affect the results of six local races including county commissioner races in precincts 1 and 3, constable races in precinct 1, 2 and 4 and the race for sheriff. Of the county's 30 precincts, 21 had ballot numbers that did not match.
Visiting Judge Darryl Hester issued a court order Thursday allowing for a recount of the ballots. District Judge J. Manuel Banales withdrew himself because he was on the ballot for the 13th Court of Appeals.
Kleberg County officials are still unsure how the ballots cast on March 14 were overcounted.
County Commissioner Romeo Lomas said that technicians from the manufacturer of the voting machines, Election Systems and Software Inc. in Omaha, Neb., visited Kingsville on Thursday and said that the over-count was due to human error.
"They said that someone entered the information more than once,'' Lomas said.
Lomas said he isn't ruling out the possibility of foul play.
Alicia Gamez, chief deputy for the county clerk's office, helped operate the machines election night and said she thinks the error occurred because the county didn't have the proper software to run the computers.
"There is an election reporting system that will prevent overstacking of the votes,'' Gamez said. "If you save it in a disc and reinsert the disc it prevents this from happening. They should have known we needed that software.''
But Todd Urosevich, vice president of customer services for Elections Systems and Software, Inc. said the overcount probably resulted from a procedural error.
"There was an incorrectly loaded disc moved from one scanner to the other,'' he said. "The equipment did what it was supposed to do, but proper procedures weren't followed.''
Urosevich said that on-site contract personnel who help counties use the computers were probably responsible for the mistake.
"In the county's defense, they were probably guided in the wrong direction by the person who was on site,'' he said.
Additional software
Urosevich said the approximately $12,599 software reporting package isn't required, but that most counties with multiple scanners have it.
The problem will be avoided in the recount because county personnel will use a single scanner, Urosevich said. He said similar mistakes have happened occasionally.
Lomas said that when the county purchased the machines, commissioners weren't told about the additional software.
"We thought we were buying the Cadillac of election machines, and we weren't told we needed additional software to safeguard them,'' Lomas said. "If we do need more software, we will buy it. We just aren't sure exactly what happened yet."
Recount results
On election night, two electronic scanners counted ballots at the county clerk's office. Ballots were fed into the two machines, which count at a rate of about 70 or 80 ballots a minute. The scanners read the ballots in four batches. First, they counted the early votes, and then counted the votes 10 precincts at a time.
Roberto Moreno, the county chair of the Democratic Party, has said it's unlikely that the recount will affect who comes out on top in the county's two runoff elections for county commissioner Precinct 1 and constable Precinct 2. But the second- and third-place candidates of those races could change, putting different candidates in the runoff on April 11. A change could leave a candidate with less than two weeks to campaign before voting begins.
Campaigning
The error was discovered by Melissa Trevino De La Garza, the tax-assessor collector and voter registrar, whose duties include comparing a list of those who voted to the number of ballots counted.
"Whoever brought this error to light should be commended,'' said Jane Dees, spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State's Office in Austin. "These sorts of things happen, but this was a little later than they usually happen. They did the noble and right thing. They are following correct procedure."
Dees said that the judge who granted the order has the authority to postpone the runoff election, but the county will still have to hold an election for the U.S. Senate race in April.
"If the recount changes the outcome, some candidates may not feel that two weeks is long enough to campaign," Dees said.
She said that election mistakes by humans and machines are common, but they are usually discovered within a few days of the election.
Gamez said there has been no trouble with the machines in the past.
Costly changes
Former Democratic Party Chairman Horacio "Hoss" Castillo, who helped oversee the election, said he was leery of the vote tallies election night, but not suspicious enough to question them.
"I was sort of surprised at the numbers, but I didn't really think anything was wrong,'' Castillo said.
He said the Democratic Party had the runoff ballots printed on Thursday, even though the party isn't certain who the candidates in the runoff will be.
"We had to do it,'' Castillo said. "Early voting starts Monday. I don't know what we will do if they are wrong.''
A change could cost thousands of dollars if new ballots need to be printed. If another countywide race, such as sheriff, has to be added to the ballot, it would cost about $4,000, party officials said.
County Commissioner Dewey Hubert said he had felt fairly secure going into the runoff with 57 percent of the vote in the primary. But now he isn't so sure.
"Who knows how it will affect the ballot?'' he said. "I'll just have to wait and see what happens. I don't like it, but there is nothing I can do about it."