Latest Update On Harris County Republican Election-Denial Lawsuits

Each week I watch the weekly Thursday public hearing on Zoom today before Judge David Peeples in San Antonio about the 21 election re-do suits filed by Harris County Republicans defeated 2022 elections. Here is the most recent update from the May 17 hearing.   

Here are weekly repeating points: Re-doing the elections is what is sought--Not declaring a new winner. /Judge Peeples will decide all cases. No jury./Judge Peeples is reported to be fair-minded and seems to be so in the hearings./The first trial will be Erin Lunceford seeking to commandeer the election away from Tamika Craft. It’s separated from the other cases because it was further along in discovery. Though that may not be so anymore after the recent death of witness Alan Vera who was a Republican who went around saying our elections were suspect. The Craft trial starts August 1/The other 20 cases will be heard in the fall. Maybe all 20 in a bundle. Maybe 2 separate trials./All cases are likely headed to the hyper-partisan Texas Supreme Court which is bad news for anybody who respects the rule of law.

Today’s 40 minute hearing had focus on the Judge Jason Cox/Rory Olsen case.

The attorney for defeated Olsen is Jared Woodfill. Google Jared Woodfill and see what you think & see what you think of this Rory Olsen individual for retaining him.

Cox beat Olsen by 33,000 votes. The Judge asked Woodfill about various claims he is making about dead voters and voters who no longer lived in the county on Election Day as he works to get to the needed vote totals to re-do the election. (There are also claims of voters allegedly turned away at the polls.)
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It’ll take a lot of wrongful voters to make up a 33,000 vote gap. The margins of defeat by the 21 losers range from 429 votes up to 34,742. All but five of the cases have margins of 18,000 votes or more. Judge Hidalgo beat Ted Cruz-endorsed Mealer by 18,183.

Woodfill said his expert witnesses are out there rustling up proof of all these many thousands of improper voters.

Judge Peeples suggested that next week he’ll have questions about how the cases are being constructed by the plaintiffs. (There is nothing good or bad you can read into that as far as I can tell. The Judge does not tip his hand about much.)

The attorneys for the defendants will be making a motion to dismiss the cases in July. I’m uncertain why in July and not at some other time. But that’s the stated plan. Maybe that is when Judge Peeples will have enough information to see if the cases have merit enough for trial.

Two recent investigative reports, one by Jennifer Rice at the Houston Chronicle and the other by Andrew Schneider at KUHF 88.7 FM, have said the facts are not there to merit a re-do of the elections.
We’ve already lost our elected school board in Houston in what was only 60 years ago a Jim Crow city. At core this is not about the elected Democrats being challenged. It is about our right as citizens to be have free elections and for election results to be respected.

I encourage rank and file Democrats and people who care about democracy to discuss these assaults on freedom with others & insist that elected Democrats and Democrats running for any office to make the protection and promotion of democracy a central issue.