These are serious claims, and sound a lot like the Obama complaints after Nevada. It's too early to judge the validity of these accusations, bit I think Ben Smith's reporting on the Clinton campaign's own desire to "control" the caucuses provides some useful context.

Texas caucus hardball
March 01, 2008
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0308/Texas_caucus_hardball.html

The Dallas Morning News gets hold of Clinton caucus "training materials," in which supporters are instructed to fight for procedural control of caucuses.
The materials say in part, "DO NOT allow the supporter of another candidate to serve in leadership roles."
It goes on to say, "If our supporters are outnumbered, ask the Temporary Chair if one of our supporters can serve as the Secretary, in the interest of fairness.
"The control of the sign-in sheets and the announcement of the delegates allotted to each candidate are the critical functions of the Chair and Secretary. This is why it is so important that Hillary supporters hold these positions."
Some of the moments on the ground in Nevada showed how crucial technical control can be, particularly when -- there, as expected in Texas -- nobody has any idea what the rules are. Really makes you love the caucus process.

I talked to my mom in Midland, Texas. This is the exact OPPOSITE of what was happening where she was caucusing. She arrived early and was told that she could not enter until after 7 pm. That is until she discovered that they were letting Clinton supporters in the back door.

This isnt surprising. I'm sure there is a lot more going on at caucuses that the general public doesnt know about, and given how emphatic supporters can be for either candidate, I can see stuff like this happening. Just like in Nevada, all kinds of stuff happened. I'm sure more info will come out.

I think she's trying to delegitimize a Barack Texas win so he can't go ahead and claim the win tonight and roll out his 50 Superdelegates and 50+million February numbers. At this point, she's not waging a campaign, she's simply trying to buy time by using negative tactics for the past 10 days, and now, litigation. Scorched earth. God I hope Barack wins RI and OH.

Here comes the 'Texas doesn't count' argument.

How dare they?! How dare those Obama caucusers try to do what Hillary's people did in Nevada?!! And the nerve of them trying to beat Hillary at doing it again in Texas! Shocking.

THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!!! FOR HILLARY!!!
yoohoo! our village idiot is back!

I am hearing the same from both sides, Clinton and Obama supporters allegedly playing foul--should be investigated.

Did anyone notice, though, how everyone is reporting nearly 1 MILLION votes in TX to only be 2%? It makes no sense!

More Clinton campaign posturing. Probably just anticipating fall-out from this:

“We are disappointed to see the Clinton campaign once again engaging in an effort to diminish the importance of the Texas caucuses and discourage Texans from participating. We have reported several specific incidents of Clinton campaign supporters seeking to circumvent the rules and illegally boost their caucus performance by soliciting signatures on precinct convention sign-in sheets – even before the caucuses have started.

“We are pleased to see that the Texas Democratic Party responded to our reports of wrongdoing and is working diligently to ensure that the rules are followed, and that eligible voters are allowed to participate and have their votes counted in a timely fashion.”

Below are just some of the reports we have received of Clinton campaign supporters attempting to circumvent the caucus rules:

Tarrant County Pct. 3511

N. Euless Elem. School 1101 Denton Drive, Euless, TX
HRC supporter was outside polling place using copy of sign-in sheet and having HRC voters sign-up ostensibly for precinct convention.

El Paso County Pct. 81
Report that Election Judge is being pressured to allow HRC people to sign up for convention early.

Tarrant County Pct. 3282
St. Andrews Lutheran Church
HRC supporter was outside polling place using copy of sign-in sheet and having HRC voters sign-up ostensibly for precinct convention

Dallas County Pct. 3529
Oak Clift
Election Judge is giving people who can't come back for the caucus a piece of paper with a signature line and write in candidate line. She is telling them that they can sign this and their votes will be entered later. When our precinct captain brought it to her attention and showed her the rules, she became irate.

Jefferson County Pct. 39
Election Judge is an HRC supporter and is telling people to sign caucus sheets now to vote. Then, the judge is telling people to not come back tonight to caucus because "she already has her delegates picked out."

The Bastards! Those reporters should get over there and break down those doors!

Someone wanna tell me why there's a story containing accusations against Obama, but nothing covering the corresponding accusations against Clinton?

Seriously, what's up with TPM lately?

Voter fraud or no, this looks like a pre-meditated pretext for a legal challenge. As was talked about a couple of days ago, this may just be a tactic to try to suppress or delay the results of the TX caucus.

The press conference seems to have all the spontaneity of the pro-Bush actions in Florida 2000.

Perhaps these caucuses are full of mischief, both sides. But I've said before, if there's anything the Clintons can't control, even if it's on the up and up, they will fight to the death. They will throw a tantrum every day of the week and twice on Sunday to force division. This is a 30 year pattern. Blame the media. Blame the disarray of a caucus. Blame the judge in Nevada who wouldn't allow them to block the caucus of that union that didn't endorse Hillary. Blame the democratic party for not yet yielding to their request to count Florida and Michigan.

Regarding Texas, assuming both sides bent the rules.

Will they say "Hey, it's not fair they cheated better than we did"?

I just left my caucus in Austin. There were 200-300 people (my estimate) lined up to caucus and we had to wait forever to get inside. The doors didn't open until 8:15 or so, an hour after they were supposed to. (Apparently there was a mix-up getting the voter rolls up the caucus room -- I'm not sure exactly what the issue was.) In our case, there were at least a dozen Obama volunteers and one Clinton volunteer on hand. At one point the Clinton guy called out, "Stickers! Does anyone want a Clinton sticker?" Dead silence from the crowd. But once inside the hall, there were folks lining up at the Clinton table, so it wasn't a blowout.

Perhaps these caucuses are full of mischief, both sides. But I've said before, if there's anything the Clintons can't control, even if it's on the up and up, they will fight to the death. They will throw a tantrum every day of the week and twice on Sunday to force division. This is a 30 year pattern. Blame the media. Blame the disarray of a caucus. Blame the judge in Nevada who wouldn't allow them to block the caucus of that union that didn't endorse Hillary. Blame the democratic party for not yet yielding to their request to count Florida and Michigan.

Regarding Texas, assuming both sides bent the rules.

Will they say "Hey, it's not fair they cheated better than we did"?

My wife and I were not allowed in our polling place in precinct 219 in Randall County to caucus. We were there to caucus for Hillary.

The only thing I saw weird in the caucus itself was an Obama name crossed out and replaced it with Hillary.

Why anyone would think that Obama's supporters would not stop Clinton supporters is beyond me. If they will call and threaten people supporting Clinton what makes you think they won't keep them from the caucus tonight. Obama thought he was being sneaky about Rezko and calling Canada about NAFTA, but he has been caught on both. He is not above doing sneaky things to win . Obama does not impress me, I'm not moved by his pretty words of "hope" "change" and "yes we can" he sounds to much like bush did in 2000 and 2004 and look where Bush has us. In a War for one. I didn't vote for the War and I was against it from the start, so can I run for President. Clinton has been to the middle east six times and Obama has only been to Kenya once. If Clinton wins the primary and Obama wins the caucus it should be a equal split on the delegates. But Obama would die before he would let that happen. If Obama is the nominee I will vote for McCain or Nadar.

Did the Clinton supporters try "pushing" the door open instead of "pulling" it?

Watching one of Clinton supporters arguing that Obama was arguing that momentum counted after super tuesday, but is now arguing that pledged delegates count. Which is absolutely crazy and backwards. They've been talking about pledged delegates since Nevada. And of course Tweety didn't call her on it. Gotta love that MSM bias against the Clintons. Not!

As they say on (only slightly) less mature parts of the internet: pics or it didn't happen.

I just got back from my precinct caucus with my kids at 9:45 pm. Texas and the Texas Democratic party was completely unprepared for the turnout tonight. Having caucuses directly after a primary is a horrible idea. Here's how my evening went. But I saw no nefarious stuff and doubt the reports. There's no way to know who anyone is supporting at the door anyway.

My precinct is a exurban/rural area about 10 miles NW of Waco that is maybe 75% Anglo, 20% Hispanic, 5% black. It's a mix of upscale subdivisions mixed in with farm land and pretty poor rural areas (double-wides etc.).

I stopped by my precinct around 5 pm to vote after picking up my oldest daughter from elementary school so she could vote with me. My precinct is the local middle school library and at 5 pm the line was going out the door. Maybe 40 people were in line. We waited about 1/2 hour to vote which was shocking. In the 5 years I've lived here I've never had a line at the polls. Inside they were using eight e-slate voting machines. The line was not due to the machines but the two old ladies signing people in who couldn't keep up. They said there were lines all day with only about a 10 minute break in late morning.

My wife had early-voted last week and she picked up the little ones on the way home from work. We got home around 6 and quickly fed the kids and turned back around to caucus at about 6:55 pm. We arrived back at the middle school and there were perhaps 200 people there and a long line down the street. It was 7:10 and there were still over 150 people waiting in line to vote. That's how high the turnout was here. Lots of working folks on the way home from work used to being able to slip in to vote at the last minute.

Since the caucuses depend on the final list of Democratic voters they had to wait until every single voter had voted before even thinking about getting the caucus started. Although the polls closed at 7 pm it was 7:45 until the last voter had voted and the precinct workers could start preparing the caucus lists. Then the wait really started.

The precinct workers had to go back through their voting lists and highlight every name of a person that had voted in the Democratic primary. They had one precinct roll book that was the official sign-in book for primary voting and were going through it line by line and highlighting the names of Democratic voters in a second book that was the caucus book. Since they hadn't been doing this during the day it was a tedious process with just two precinct workers and it took them until about 8:45 to get that task done. Meanwhile there were probably 150 Democrats waiting around in the middle school library to caucus. Finally around 9 pm they were ready to start and people could start signing in on the caucus lists with their name and preference. My wife was there as an Obama precinct captain and busy working the lists. I was keeping track of our 3 daughters ages 1, 4, and 9 who were busy trashing the library and highly restless because we hadn't brought milk or supplies, not expecting to wait that long. Other parents were there with young kids also unprepared for the wait and elderly with no place to sit. Lots of frustrated people. But no partisan games at all. Everyone was friendly and neighborly and keeping their preferences pretty much to themselves.

Finally at 9:20 pm I was able to sign in again for Obama and take off with the kids to put them to bed an hour after their bedtime.

In our precinct there were definitely more Clinton supporters than Obama. I'm guessing maybe 100 Clinton supporters to perhaps 60 for Obama. My wife will have the final numbers when she finally gets home tonight. Lots of old ladies voting en mass for Clinton and quite a few older professional and construction contractor-type Hispanics who were also going for Clinton. The younger crowd and white men were going for Obama.

In any event, I've concluded the idea of having both a caucus and primary on the same day is beyond stupid. When there is heavy turnout it just becomes a mess. I can't imagine how things must have been in the large urban precincts with heavy Democratic turnout. My precinct is perhaps 70% Republican.

Oh yeah.... the Republicans were also holding their caucus. About 20 of them showed up and were able to fit into a small computer lab inside the library. Some Ron Paul and Huckabee signs and buttons on some folks. They were completely overwhelmed by the Democrats in what is a heavily Republican area.

Could we talk about how these kind of tactics are why the Texas two-step is really undemocratic?

Can anyone give a solid argument as to why one person, one vote isn't good enough?

Sounds like Hillary's campaign is desperate to spin Obama's huge lead in delegates.

It's also pretty sicken Josh Marshall and other pundits basically tolerate and endorse this sort of sleaze by saying all's fair in politics. Actually, no, it's thier job to report on these tactics and find out if they're sleazy.

Not merely "report" them like so many stenographers.

Way to emulate the MSM Josh!