The state’s new $3 billion dementia research fund has been blocked temporarily by a trio of voters who claim voting machines used in this month’s election are faulty.
The plaintiffs — Shannon Huggins, Lars Kuslich and Jose Silvester — filed the action Nov. 13 in Travis County against the Texas Secretary of State’s office. In it, they claim that some voting machines were not certified by federal law and that the election results should be scrapped and a new election be ordered.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick championed the fund during the legislative session and listed it as a priority for lawmakers. On Wednesday, he slammed the plaintiffs for singling out Proposition 14, which was the funding of the research effort.
“Surprisingly, none of the other propositions were challenged in court under this pretense,” Patrick said in a statement. “This attack on DPRIT is disgusting and is a disservice to the roughly 500,000 Texans who suffer from some form of dementia, and their families who suffer along with them.”
The plaintiffs, who are representing themselves without an attorney, do not say why they are only protesting the results that overwhelmingly approved the funding of the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (DPRIT) and not the other 16 propositions Texans considered on the same ballot. But, they note the large amount of taxpayer money involved. “As Texas taxpayers, Contestants suffer a distinct injury from the $3 billion diversion of general revenue triggered by proposition 14’s passage from illegal votes,” the lawsuit states.
Under current law, constitutional amendments can’t go into effect if their election results are challenged in court. House Bill 16, which passed the Legislature in September, changes that but it doesn’t become law until Dec. 4. Because HB 16 isn’t in effect yet, DPRIT’s funding mechanism is halted.
State officials in recent years have bemoaned the tactic of using lawsuits to halt constitutional amendments from going into effect despite voter approval. In 2023, right-wing activists filed multiple lawsuits to block constitutional amendments in the days after the election, also based on claims — considered false at that time — that cast doubt on the state’s voting equipment.
In the most recent lawsuit, two of the three plaintiffs — Huggins and Kuslich — have filed previous challenges about voting machines in other elections.
Patrick called the plaintiffs’ efforts lawsuit abuse. “This frivolous lawsuit has prevented the DPRIT constitutional amendment from taking effect, despite Proposition 14’s passage with nearly 70% of the vote!” Patrick said.
He also urged the legal system to take expedient action to allow DPRIT to become law.
As the story notes, multiple lawsuits were filed in 2023 over the constitutional amendment elections, making the same wacked-out claims about voting machines. One weird trick was then employed to enable the amendments to be implemented. I don’t know what happened to the lawsuits, but my guess is they were eventually mooted.
Here we have a similar cast of crackpots focusing on one of the amendments from this year, making the same ridiculous claims. And as noted Dan Patrick is mad at them because he supports this particular amendment. Boy, where could all this distrust of electronic voting machines have come from? It’s almost as if a group of people have been brainwashed by a group of dishonest political agitators who make repeated false statements about the election process in the interest of their own power at the expense of the public good. Maybe leaders like Dan Patrick should be more forceful in condemning such perfidy and working to restore trust in the integrity of the electoral process, whether one likes the results of a given election or not. What do you say, Danno?
Anyway. It seems like there’s a short timeframe for this holdup, after which the dumb lawsuits will eventually disappear and we’ll all forget this happened. But don’t forget why it happened, or who’s ultimately at fault for it. Because it will happen again.