Texas Elections: TIME FOR TRANSPARENCY
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Internal documents obtained by Dolcefino Consulting reveal Harris County lawyers know at least 67 polls in November ran out of ballot paper. Hundreds of voters were turned away at just four of the places in clear violation of Texas election laws.
Nine months after the November election debacle the first election challenge is set to go to trial next week. And now the Republican who challenged Lina Hidalgo last November has come out swinging. Alex Mealer is demanding transparency.
The election for Harris County judge last fall made national headlines.
The incumbent was certainly Hollywood’s favorite, but under attack here for being soft on crime and way too liberal.
“You’re not going to get as many bad candidates as Lina Hidalgo,” claims political scientist Mark Jones.
It was an election marred by broken voting machines, long lines, and a curious shortage of ballots.
And Alex Mealer, she’s now challenging the results.
“This is my home. This is something worth fighting for,” states Alex Mealer.
Alex Mealer is finally breaking her monthslong silence with this explosive critique.
“What I can’t sit back and watch is this extremely progressive, hyper crony partisan machine that is now operating in our county,” continues Mealer.
Mealer was a bomb squad tech, works in energy finance, a self-described soccer mom. A good resume when you first run for political office.
In the days before the vote polls showed the race for county judge were simply too close to call, but Mealer was now up slightly with crime the big issue.
Early voting was a dead heat, but the expected Republican surge on election day never showed up in the numbers.
In the final vote Mealer came up short by 18,000 votes.
“And she had a furniture salesman. You can’t win them all, you can’t win all the bets,” said Lina Hidalgo.
We all know what Mattress Mack means to Texas, how many in this town he has helped. But now he’s fighting for all of us, for election integrity.
“Now more than ever I’m convinced it was a botched election,” states Mattress Mack.
“If it was not right, we need to have a new election, so that the people of Harris County’s voice can be heard,” continues Mack.
Another four years of Lina Hidalgo. We have watched the consequences already. Have you been watching Lina Hidalgo in action?
“You will not cut me out. You will not beat me down. You will not tell me to sit down and shut up,” exclaimed Hidalgo.
She sounds, well, paranoid.
“I don’t want to see this Trump style harassment of our elections administrator,” said Hidalgo in an election commission meeting.
Let’s just say what a lot of folks are already saying, she sounds unhinged.
“I don’t know what the fuck she’s threatened you with,” said Hidalgo in another Commissioner’s Court meeting.
But since election day we have been trying to slowly peel the onion of what happened. We all know it was a nightmare.
“And for that to not be ready you have Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday to make sure we were good I mean that has never happened at this poll,” expressed Tamaro Bell.
We knew about problems with election day voting early that morning. Take a look at the long line at the West Gray Service Center, a popular voting location in Midtown where 20 machines were broken.
“Every voter in Harris County knows we are having problems in our election, it’s about time we figure this out,” states commissioner Tom Ramsey.
A report from Harris County elections administrator Clifford Tatum actually called the November election a success and blamed some election problems on the Astros championship parade the day before.
“Believe it or not it may actually be why your polling location on election day opened late,” said reporter Melanie Lawson.
Who are they kidding?
“I think it’s a joke. And they’re making the citizens of Harris County pay for their ineptitude,” expressed Mattress Mack.
“I do not understand why the state of Texas has turned their back on Harris County. And when I say turned their back — they are authorized to do a forensic audit on this election, and it’s seven months and they haven’t started. You shouldn’t be holding that office if you do not think transparency in our elections is important,” said Alex Mealer.
We know from emails Harris County still hadn’t provided requested election records to the Secretary of State four months after the vote and there’s no evidence the Secretary of State Jane Nelson has any sense of urgency and she’s a Republican.
“Isn’t it a little embarrassing that not one government official can say what happened. What is the extent? How many months is reasonable? Should we wait another two years?” continues Mealer.
The scathing audit of the 2020 election didn’t come out until after we voted in November ‘22. That’s helpful.
“What I would say to every statewide leader is prove me wrong. Show that I’m just a sore loser. But get down here, do an audit, and actually be able to stand up and say what happened, because nobody has. That is my biggest issue. Tell me I’m wrong. But somebody just say what happened,” said Mealer.
We now know Tatum closed popular Republican polling sites for the November election.
Among them, Frostwood Elementary in Spring Branch, and 1001 Preston, a favored voting site for downtown office workers.
The largest share of registered voters is in Precinct 3, the only precinct that has a Republican County Commissioner. Yet that same area was next to last in the number of places folks could go vote.
Commissioner Ramsey had fewer early voting locations than Rodney Ellis did.
“What you’ve done is created an atmosphere where people don’t trust what you are doing,” said Commissioner Ramsey.
That’s another layer of the onion peeled. It’s the same part of town where maps showed most of the ballot paper shortages.
It was a blatant violation of the Texas election code. Polls were supposed to have 25 percent more paper than they did four years ago. There were more than three million sheets of ballot paper on hand in a warehouse.
If this was incompetence then we should see these problems everywhere, but it’s hard not to notice where most of the ballot paper problems showed up.
“County Judge, will you talk to us about the election records please?” asked Dolcefino Consulting reporter Andrea Palacio.
Lina Hidalgo isn’t talking, but we found the post-election survey of precinct judges and their alternates kept from voters for months. 119 polls didn’t open on time more than 120 election day polling locations turned voters away because they lacked supplies to simply administer the election.
“They suppressed the vote to the extent that the true results of this race are unknowable,” expressed Mealer.
Election day logs show some polls didn’t even have ballot paper at the start of the day.
There was missing and broken voting equipment across the county. A precinct judge in El Lago says he alone turned away 40 voters when he ran out of paper at 6 pm. That’s just one location, a microcosm of systematic failures. Inexcusable.
Fifteen percent of 782 polling locations didn’t even open on time, some shut down for hours.
And the latest court filing now claims there were 1116 people who admitted on election forms they no longer even lived in Harris County, but they were apparently still allowed to vote.
More layers to that onion.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of judicial candidate Erin Lunceford now claims there were also more than 19,000 illegal votes cast, many of them absentee ballots. The first trial is in weeks.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars have already been spent on election challenges and Harris County is spending your money suing the state to keep some election records a secret.
“Everybody’s vote needs to count, and we need people to step up and help fund this – the lawyers that are doing this fight because it is a long and arduous fight,” stated Mattress Mack.
“I’m doing it right now for the future of Harris County, for my children, my grandchildren, for other people’s children and grandchildren,” continues Mack.
I’m very excited to have Mack with me, that we get transparency and accountability,” expressed Mealer.
Don’t forget that soft on crime judges who got people murdered. All were declared winners in November too.
In one case, less than five hundred votes out of a million cast.
“Whether you are Democrat or Republican, Independent, when you get shot you bleed red. That’s who I am fighting for,” expressed Mack.
“I am concerned for the future elections. It cannot stand like this,” expressed Mealer.
For Alex Mealer, this fight for election fairness, for election integrity, for the truth, it’s worth fighting for.
“Every day longer this takes, that is Lina, Rodney, Clifford Tatum winning. It’s another day that we don’t have accountability and transparency,” concludes Mealer.
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