Bay Area Houston

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.

There is a League City connection.

Well leave it to the Republican Party to continue running to the court house filing more lawsuits because they lost an election. Recently Alexandra Mealer dropped her frivolous suit against Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Even her attorneys were not happy with her. Now three plaintiffs are suing to remove Hidalgo from office even though she is scheduled to return on Monday. So who are these folks? Glad you asked.

Dave Wilson. Dave is one of those “Run for something” guys. Once he won running as a Black man. Literally. KHOU has that story. “The mailers featured “smiling African-American faces — which he readily admits he just lifted off websites — and captioned with the words, ‘Please vote for our friend and neighbor Dave Wilson'” over 24-year incumbent Bruce Austin. He won in the heavily black district by just 26 votes.”

Thomas Thrash. I can’t find anything about him on the world wide inter webs besides his property in Katy.

Thomas A. Bazan. He is listed as a Lead Testing & Removal Specialist living in Jersey Village. He is also a republican precinct chair.

Milinda M. Morris. Oh this is a doozy. Milinda was a failed candidate for Texas Senate losing by 60 points. (not a typo). She is also a member of the State Republican Executive Committee.

Tom Slocum Jr. Another doozy. Ran for Railroad Commissioner and won 14% of the vote. Graduated from Texas A&M. I wonder if he is related to Coach Slouch of A&M Football?

Keith A. Gross. The League City connection is the attorney who filed the misspelled suit, Keith A. Gross Texas Bar No. 24027357. He is a former City Council Member. You might want to check out his Yelp reviews.

The suit itself, which can be found here, is in dire need of a spell check. Hidalgo is not HILDAGO. Katy Texas is not KATEY. The suit references Texas Penal Code 22.041. What is Texas Penal Code 22.041? Glad you asked:

Texas Penal Code 22.041 Abandoning or Endangering Child. An offense under Texas Penal Code § 22.041(b) is a felony of the second degree if the alleged offender abandons the child under circumstances that a reasonable person would believe would place the child in imminent danger of death, or bodily injury, or physical or mental impairment.

Local Facebook Attorney stated “What a frivolous load of crap. These whiny little bitches just need to shut the fuck up and move on.”

As with the other lawsuits it was frivolous.

Alexandra Mealer finally dropped her lawsuit against Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo after realizing it was a baseless, frivolous case. According to the Houston Chronicle:
“The lawsuit was frivolous when she filed it, and she has wasted a tremendous amount of the County’s and the Court’s time before finally acknowledging tonight that there is no evidence to support her outlandish claims,” Manne said in a statement. 

It was frivolous just like the other 22 cases against Democratic judges who won their elections. Mealer could not identify one single voter that could not vote in the 2022 election as she alleged. She then wanted to amend her suit to claim thousands of votes were illegally counted, a claim even her own attorneys did not support.

Hidalgo was represented by an attorney who donated his services. Unfortunately by law the Democratic Judges could not receive pro bono work. They had to fundraise to pay attorney fees, funds that could not be used for re-election. It was a brilliant plan by the Harris County Republican Party and now they need to pay for it.

Mealer and her attorneys need to be sanctioned and all legal fees should be paid not only for Hidalgo’s attorneys but for all of the attorneys representation the 22 Democratic Judges. Frivolous lawsuits cannot go unpunished.

Now quit fucking whining Mealer.

The multiple lawsuits, filed by Harris County Republicans after they got their asses kicked in 2022, are frivolous and the investigation by the Houston Chronicle shows it.

A Houston Chronicle examination of election data found that while there were problems and technical glitches, there remains no evidence voters were systematically disenfranchised. Nor is there evidence the Election Day issues prompted people not to vote in numbers great enough to change the outcome of any of the races being contested.

Sounds familiar? It’s what Fox News knew all along about the 2020 election and they are paying for it today. Unfortunately facts don’t matter to republicans, lies do. This entire set of frivolous lawsuits are designed to drain Judges from campaign money since, as sitting judges, they cannot accept pro bono legal assistance and the County cannot represent them. They are also about continuing to create more distrust of our paper trail voting system. There was no election fraud. They know it. Fox News knew it. We know it. And they lost 65 out of 69 races.

The lawsuits claim there was an effort by the Election Administrator to limit ballots to certain locations therefore some voters did not get an opportunity to vote. The data shows otherwise. Not one individual has reported not being able to vote due to the paper shortages in the 29 voting locations.

BTW In Harris County voters can vote at any location in the county. They can visit Harrisvotes.org and find another location with the shortest lines. There were over 1000 locations across the county and they can even vote at the their local early voting location. Judges at the polling location have maps of all voting locations. Polling locations are operated by 2 judges one from each party. If there was a shortage then why didn’t the republican judges allow that to happen?

The Chronicles article is a good read. Here are some results:

In more than eight hours of public hearings [on voting bills in Austin] largely focused on Harris County’s November election, no one testified that they had difficulty casting a ballot in Harris County. 

Based on interviews and the county time-stamped data, the Chronicle was able to confirm 20 of the 29 voting locations cited by Republicans ran out of ballot paper.

Of the 29 locations, 55 percent were in precincts won by former President Donald Trump.

Under the countywide election system in place since 2019, voters can cast ballots at any polling place — they are not limited to their home precinct. Around half of Election Day voters cast ballots outside their home precincts that first year.