A useful guide from the Chron. I admit, I had lost track of a couple of these.
The 2022 midterm elections proved contentious for Harris County. Ballot paper shortages, long lines at polling locations and malfunctioning voting equipment fueled allegations from conservative candidates and officials that the county’s elections were rigged to favor Democrats.
A storm of legal action followed. The Texas Legislature abolished Harris County’s newly-formed elections administrator’s office, a criminal investigation was launched and Republicans filed a slew of lawsuits on the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 Insurrection.
Twenty-one candidates, all Republicans, brought their grievances before a visiting judge in a bid to overturn the election.
But Judge David Peeples, who was brought in from San Antonio to oversee the cases, upheld the results of all but one of the elections. Three cases were dropped, one was dismissed and an appeals court ruled Tuesday that there was no evidence to support Republican allegations of voter suppression in 14 of the cases — leaving just three outstanding.
The Harris County Republican Party did not respond to the Houston Chronicle’s request for comment.
Here’s what happened to each of the cases.
There’s the DaSean Jones/Tami Pierce case, the one victory for the Republicans. The story note that this ruling is still under appeal and as such the election that had been scheduled for this May has been postponed. There’s the Republican appeal that was denied earlier this week, which was a consolidation of 14 cases; the Chris Daniel/Marilyn Burgess case was just the one that got used for the name. I’d have to go back and check them all, but most if not all of them were Democratic victories in the range of the 25K vote margin that Burgess had, which would have been an extremely tall order to fill, if they had bothered to present evidence. Not presenting any sure made it easier for the judges, and more hilarious from an objective standpoint.
The remaining cases:
Peeples ruled in favor of elected officials in two judicial races that remain unresolved in appeals court: Erin Lunceford’s case against Judge Tamika Craft for judge of the 189th District Court, and Rory R. Olsen’s claim against Judge Jason Cox for Probate Court No. 3.
Lunceford lost to Craft by 2,743 votes. Peoples found that, while around 2,779 illegal votes were cast in the election, that was not enough to place the “true outcome” of the race in doubt.
“Even if the 2,779 affected votes had benefited Craft by 90% to 10%, an assumption no one would make, that would not be enough to affect the result,” Peoples wrote in the ruling.
The First Court of Appeals is hearing Lunceford’s case. Her attorneys argue that estimates used to determine Peeple’s findings were inaccurate and failed to address voters who were allegedly unable to cast ballots because of paper shortages.
Olsen lost to Cox by a much larger margin of more than 33,000 votes. Peeples once again found that any issues that impacted the election were not significant enough to have a material impact on the outcome of Cox and Olsen’s race.
Olsen’s case is being heard in the 14th Court of Appeals. He alleged that Peeples erred in granting Cox’s motion for a no-evidence summary judgement, among other concerns.
The four remaining cases were either dropped or dismissed the same year they were filed. The most high-profile of which was Alexandra del Moral Mealer’s election challenge against Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.
[…]
Two other Republican candidates dropped their election challenges around the same time as Mealer. Sartaj Bal dropped his case against Judge Toria Finch on Sept. 28, 2023, and James Lombardino dropped his claim against Judge Audrie Lawton-Evans on Oct. 4, 2023.
Dan Spjut attempted to drop his case against Juanita Jackson in August 2023, but Peeples instead chose to dismiss the suit outright.
Ah, Alex Mealer, the whiniest and sore-loserest of the bunch, who has since failed upward to a completely undeserved spot on the Metro board. I’m sure she’s a peach to sit next to in long meetings. Anyway, I expect Lunceford and Olsen to lose their appeals, and I hope DaSean Jones wins his. Someday we will get those results.