Dallas County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia has filed an emergency petition in state court concerning the November 5 general election and some of the county’s early voting centers.
The petition is titled “EMERGENCY PETITION TO OPEN LOCKED BALLOT BOXES TO RE-TABULATE BALLOTS AT THE CENTRAL COUNT STATION FOR THREE DALLAS COUNTY VOTE CENTERS.”
The document opens with some startling revelations.
“During the process of complying with Section 127.156, it was determined that the tapes produced by the automatic tabulating equipment from three early voting centers showed significantly more ballots recorded than the numbers of ballots tabulated at the central counting station for those same early voting centers,” the pleadings say.
“These differences may have been caused by human error in handling ballots during tabulation at the central counting station,” the legal document says.
The three voting centers of concern are identified in the filings as Northway Christian Church, Disciple Central Community Church, and Ministerios Charisma.
At Northway, there were 329 more votes on the Tabulator Tape than the Central Count Tape, while there were 144 more at Disciple and 115 more at Charisma.
The request to open the tabulator boxes and recount the votes comes after consultation with Christina Adkins, the director of the Election Division for the Texas Secretary of State, “who agrees with this course of action,” the document says.
The ballot boxes are sealed and may not be opened without a court order, according to Section 66.058(b-1) of the Texas election code.
Although Heider Garcia is the petitioner, the document is signed by several attorneys from Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot’s office. They identify themselves as “ATTORNEYS FOR PETITIONER HEIDER GARCIA ELECTIONS ADMINISTRATOR [caps in original].”
The other 19 factual assertions in the pleadings insist that all laws were followed in the execution of the election and that this recount is being requested to ensure that “every vote is counted.”
A certificate of service toward the end of the document indicates that Adkins and each county party chair, including Republican Party Chairman Allen West, and his Democratic counterpart Kardal Coleman had been notified of the legal action on November 11.