Republicans in Texas filed a lawsuit against the Harris County elections administrator Monday after it was revealed that 10,000 mail-in ballots weren’t originally included in the March 1 primary count.
The Harris County Republican Party says it has lost all faith in Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria, who they claim is responsible for the “worst elections fiasco in Texas history,” according to the lawsuit.
The Office of the Election Administrator in the county — which contains Houston — admitted to finding the 10,000 uncounted votes on Saturday, days after the primary election.
“How do you find 10,000 votes on a Saturday?” said outraged Texas GOP Senator Paul Bettencourt during a press conference with party leaders.
The 6,000 Democratic ballots and 4,000 Republican ballots were scanned into a tabulation machine, but were not tallied into the unofficial final count on election night.
“While we understand the seriousness of this error, the ability to identify and correct this issue is a result of a lengthy, rigorous process and is a positive example of the process ultimately working as it should,” the elections office said.
The votes are expected to be tallied into the total on Tuesday, before the election is certified.
The elections office couldn’t tell the Post how many races might be affected by the additional votes. A spokesperson said: “We don’t know.”
The GOP also alleges a slew of other problems with the election, from voting equipment being delivered late by Longoria’s office to ballots that couldn’t be read by tabulation machines. Incorrect ballots were also issued to certain polling locations, preventing people from being able to vote, the suit claims.
The filing alleges Longoria’s office provided ballots on the wrong size paper and failed to deliver the required number of working voting machines and adequate supplies.
The lawsuit asks for Longoria to step down or be fired and for court oversight for upcoming elections.
Through a spokeswoman, Longoria told the Post she has no intention to step down right now.
Harris County Democratic Party Chair Odus Evbaghar, who is a member of the five-person commission that appointed Longoria, said his party remains concerned about the missing votes and hopes to restore confidence in the process.
“We called for a post-election review of all processes — there has not been any skirting of party responsibility, and we have been completely transparent in our desire to dig into the details of what went wrong and identify how to make corrections moving forward,” he said in the statement, obtained by KHOU.