This is probably going to amount to nothing, but we still have to get through it.
A conservative candidate who ran for a seat on the Clear Creek ISD school board to fight “indoctrination” in May, has filed a lawsuit contesting her election loss, claiming problems with mail-in ballots.
Misty Dawson’s petition, filed June 30 in Galveston County District Court against Jessica Cejka, who narrowly won the District 1 seat by 43 votes, claims there were “at least 29” illegal votes counted in the race and asks for the results to be ruled void.
The basis for the petition, filed under Title 14 of the Texas Election Code, which allows any candidate of any election to contest results, is that discrepancies in mail-in ballots may have changed the outcome of the tight race. Though Dawson had a lead in early voting, Cejka won the election after mail-in ballots were counted.
“My hope is for any and all errors to be brought to light. For our district to do better in future elections. For every candidate to be given a fair (and) honest election where every eligible vote counts,” Dawson wrote in a message sent via social media Tuesday.
Cejka and Clear Creek ISD officials did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
In a response to the lawsuit filed in the case, Cejka said she rejects every claim made by Dawson.
The official results took 10 days to tally due to a large number of absentee votes. Once the results were official, Dawson said she would contest them.
In May, the district said it received 2,426 mail-in ballots. Of those, 380 were rejected, according to the district, for a number of reasons, including carrier envelopes not being signed, signatures on applications that could not immediately be verified to match the signatures on ballots and statements of residence not being included.
Among the discrepancies alleged in the lawsuit, Dawson said the District 1 position appeared on at least 19 early voting ballots for mail-in voters who did not live within the district boundaries.
John Coby, who lives in the area and follows the likes of Misty Dawson a lot more closely than I do, was first to report this. We all know why some mail ballots were rejected in May, so good luck with that. As for the rest, it’s one thing to make allegations, it’s another to prove them. According to the story, there will be a status conference for the lawsuit on September 29. I’ll keep an eye on this.
Having any voters tagged to a district other than the ones in which they reside and are registered to vote is a problem all on its own. EAs are responsible for getting this right. The challenger here may have knowledge of coding errors or they may be grasping at straws. The same goes for the other allegations.
Any chance this could wind up in 5th circuit or Texas Supreme Court? They’d surely side with conservative regardless of the facts
It is not impossible that some voters were coded wrongly into a different district than the one they should be voting in. In 2012, an entire apartment complex at 700 TC Jester with 1000 residents, maybe 200 voters, was wrongly placed in Precinct 54 rather than 902 during the reassignment of voters after redistricting, which could have affected a state house contest. I am aware of scores of similar clerical and mapping errors which happened in the post-1990 redistricting. Let’s wait and see what evidence develops, but my initial impression is that this will not change the outcome.
@Mainstream Republicans learned how to gerrymander from the 1990s Texas plans passed by the then D controlled Legislature. I don’t think there are many people around anymore who appreciate what a doozy that was when it landed at 1001 Preston. There are still traces of those lines to be found in voting precincts all over Harris County.
@voter_worker. Yes, the Democrats in the Texas Legislature went through block by block and dissected neighborhoods. I wish I had a link to the congressional map from that year. The Rorschach outline appeared as an appendix to the Supreme Court case overturning those districts, Bush v. Vera. Hispanic, black and Anglo blocks of Montrose and the Heights were separated into different districts, which must have been a nightmare for the elections staff. The number of voting precincts in the county exploded from about 400 to about 1300.
I like the fact that the Plaintiff appears to believe that all/a portion/the majority of any ‘illegal votes’ were all cast for her opponent. Sounds like the Orange Turd talking.
Props for taking that position, tho.
I do not want this partisan hack anywhere near the CCISD board. Education is about questioning and pushing boundaries, and should not be dictated by narrow minded people wanting to enforce their narrow minded views. I would be amused by how conservatives throw around “indoctrination” when they are the ONLY ones trying to push a specific agenda (white Christian nationalism). This baffles me. We actually WERE taught history growing up and at no point did I feel bad for learning about it. It was more of “well… let’s not repeat those mistakes”. And now we have people actively trying to repeat historical mistakes.