That sound you hear is me banging my head on my desk.
Ruby Woolridge
Democrat Ruby Woolridge has filed a lawsuit challenging her 717-vote primary runoff loss for the 6th Congressional District to Jana Lynne Sanchez.
In the lawsuit, Woolridge claims that Sanchez “knowingly filed petitions with fraudulent signatures” in order to secure a spot on the March primary ballot.
Sanchez called the lawsuit “frivolous.”
“Unwarranted accusations cannot undo months of hard work spent collecting qualifying signatures on voters’ doorsteps and at public events, cross-referencing names and addresses with databases and eliminating any that raised questions,” said Sanchez, a public relations specialist. “The voters clearly chose us in the primary.”
[…]
In the lawsuit, Woolridge claims that Sanchez “knowingly concealed the fraudulent signatures from the Democratic local authorities” and that the volunteer circulators signed “the forged petitions before a notary public under duress.”
Jana Sanchez
Woolridge said she “only discovered the fraudulent conduct after the initial primary election was held for the Congressional seat for District 6,” according to the lawsuit. And she claims some people couldn’t vote in the primary election because someone else had already voted in their name through mail-in ballots.
She asks, in the lawsuit, for a special election or second runoff election to be held without Sanchez’s name on the ballot.
‘The purpose of the Election Code is to prevent fraud in our primary and general elections,” Woolridge’s lawsuit states. “The fraudulent and forged signatures submitted and filed by (Sanchez) in her petitions for a place on the Democratic ballot renders her applications null and void.”
The lawsuit was filed in Ellis County against Sanchez, as well as the Texas Democratic Party, Democratic chairmen in Tarrant, Ellis and Navarro counties and the Texas secretary of state.
Sanchez filed paperwork with the court asking that the lawsuit be dismissed.
“Ms. Sanchez denies any fraud by her campaign,” her filing states. “The small group of signatures that raised suspicions were set aside before ballot petition filing. Those signatures appear to have been collected by a person later revealed to have been helping the Woolridge Campaign while paid as a contractor for the Sanchez Campaign and who later openly moved over to the Woolridge camp. That person since admitted to signing a few names on behalf of voters (potentially a crime and so reported to appropriate authorities prior to receipt of the lawsuit).”
Sanchez said she will keep fighting the lawsuit.
The DMN has a copy of the lawsuit as well as Sanchez’s response. While I think this is highly likely to be bullshit, Woolridge has the right to challenge the result if she has reason to believe she was wronged. But as I said when now-former State Rep. Lon Burnam tried something similar after losing his primary in 2014, invoking Republican talking points about “vote fraud” will not get you any sympathy from me. Don’t let your desire to win cause you to lose your soul. I’m rooting for a swift and decisive resolution to this.