Bottom line? You lost. Get over it.

I took one for the team again and read the Final Judgement Denying Election Contest. This was concerning the lawsuit filed by 21 losers candidates for Harris County judicial positions in 2022. You can read the entire judgement here if interested. My notes are below.

• Lawsuits were filed in 21 races
• This was a “test” case between Tamika Craft and Erin Lunceford and resulted in dismissing the others
• Lunceford lost by 2743 votes
• The Judge concluded “For the reasons stated below, the court has found many mistakes and violations of the Election Code by the Harris County Elections Administration Office (“EAO”) and other election officials. But the court holds that not enough votes were put in doubt to justify voiding the election for the 189th District Court and ordering new one.”
• After investigating mail in ballots, Statements of Residence, shortage of ballots, etc, the Judge determined 2779 were affected but did not result in overturning any election.
• The Harris County Elections Administration Office (EAO) did not provide enough ballots for some voting locations. The Judge was highly critical of this error and said the estimation process was in violation of the law.
• HE DID NOT ADDRESS the republican judges at the voting locations waiting till the last hour (literally) to ask for more ballots. The entire issue would have been averted if the EAO had estimated better and the judges had done their damn job.
• Because of the lack of ballots the Judge found that 2600 voters left the polling location due to a shortage of ballots. The judge estimates that between 250-850 voters who left the polling location had failed to vote.
• One election worked claims that a voter spit on her when the voter learned of the shortage. (I’m calling bullshit)
• 966 Statement of Residence were illegal votes and should not have been counted
• 36 Mail in ballots lacked a required signature and 9 were mailed in too late. (How did the Board who screen these ballots with a republican and democrat team miss this?)
• 380 out of 532 challenged Reasonable Impediment Declaration (RID), meaning they had no valid photo ID, should not have been counted. (Again WTF? The election judges should have caught these)
• 7 Ballot By Mail (BBM) should not have been counted due to signature problems
• Evidence that 2000 votes by voters whose registration was cancelled was submitted but 1995 of these were cancelled AFTER the election. 5 votes should not have been counted.

In conclusion. You lost. Get over it.

Womp. Womp.

The multiple frivolous lawsuits filed by Harris County Republicans and MAGAt Mattress Mac claiming election fraud that led to Democratic wins have been dismissed. Here is what the Houston Chronicle said this morning:

However, after an eight-day trial in which Lunceford’s legal team did not provide testimony from any disenfranchised voters, Judge David Peeples, a visiting judge from Bexar County, ruled the results of the race were legitimate. 

In a 36-page ruling, Peeples said he found Harris County had made “many mistakes and violations of the Election Code.” “But the court holds that not enough votes were put in doubt to justify voiding the election for the 189th District Court and ordering a new one,” Peeples concluded.

The lawsuits included Alexandra Mealer against Lina Hidalgo who dropped her suit a few weeks ago as did republican judicial candidates Dan Spjut, and Sartaj Bal. Only 1 of the multiple lawsuits are still pending that being the race between Republican Tami Pierce and Democrat DaSean Jones. That race was very close. DaSean is a self proclaimed “democratic socialist”. It might be better for him to lose and be back on the ballot in 2024.

But….the suits are over. The election deniers will appeal. They will continue being election deniers. They will still file frivolous lawsuits. Hopefully the plaintiffs will demand lawyer fees. All the judges who were sued had to pay their own legal fees. Lawyers were banned from providing free legal aid to the defendants. The Harris County Attorney was not allowed to represent them. So they had to raise money or pay for their fees from their own pockets. It was a brilliant and frivolous lawsuit by the Republican Party and they should be sanctioned.

You lost. Get over it.