A variety of figures gathered in Dallas County’s Civil District Courthouse on Wednesday to hear an election integrity case.
Dallas County Election Administrator Heider Garcia sought emergency relief from the 116th District Court’s Honorable Tonya Parker.
Ben Stool, with the District Attorney’s office, explained Garcia’s case to the court.
Stool said an irregularity in the vote totals coming from Central Court and three precincts required locked voter boxes from the precincts to be opened and re-tabulated.
Pleadings with the court indicate that those precincts were Northway Christian Church, Disciple Central Community Church, and Ministerios Charisma.
He explained that this could only be done with a court order. When there “is a difference of more than 3 [votes in the central count tabulation and the precinct tabulation], the law requires that [elections officials] tabulate those paper ballots.”
The difference between the official counts, which amounted to several hundred votes across three precincts, as The Dallas Express previously reported, was detected sometime after the November 5 general election.
Stool reiterated Garcia’s speculation in the court pleadings, saying this was likely caused by “human error in loading high-speed ballot counters.”
He added that he believed “not everything got loaded … [by those] working late into the night.”
The request went unchallenged by a potential opposing side.
Neither the Democratic nor Republican parties nor any minor party sent counselors to object to Garcia’s pleadings. The GOP had sent Mike Slaten, an alternate election judge at Central Count, to observe the proceedings; however, he did not offer any testimony.
Judge Parker informed those in attendance that she received a proposed order from Garcia. However, she gave no explicit indication from the bench on how she intended to rule.
Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West weighed in on the case.
“The issue of ballot reconciliation goes much further than the three early voting locations mentioned in the DCED emergency petition. The ballot reconciliation threshold is three or less. Any location that exceeded that threshold level should be re-tabulated according to Texas Election Code,” West said.
West followed up, “Furthermore, this re-tabulation process should be manually done and not through the 850 scanners which have proven to produce irregularities. It is highly disconcerting that one of the largest county metroplexes in the country has to file an emergency petition on our election system.”
West explained that this exemplified other issues in the Dallas voting system.
“It further demonstrates exactly what we have been articulating: the Dallas County Elections Department has issues with systems certification, validation, and process implementation. All this undermines voter confidence in a system that needs a third-party audit. Regardless, I want to thank all the election judges, clerks, poll watchers and workers, and voters who participated in our representative democracy,” West concluded.
Dallas County Democratic Chairman Kardal Coleman was contacted for comment but did not respond by the time of publication.
This is one of several election integrity cases that have popped up in recent days.
Former Texas House of Representatives candidate Barry Wernick filed a complaint against Garcia because Dallas County Elections published blank ballots with official signatures on its website.
Garcia removed the ballots after Wernick’s complaint and denied all wrongdoing in a statement to DX.