Posts Tagged ‘Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’

Two Texas Election Integrity Bills Pass

Monday, May 12th, 2025

Texas hasn’t suffered from the massive 3 AM ballot drops that plagued large Democratic-run cities in 2020, but there have been election irregularities, most notably in Democrat-controlled Harris County. To help remedy the situation, the Texas legislature has passed two separate bills giving the Texas Attorney General power to reign rein in election shenanigans.

First, a bill preventing judges from issuing last minute election rulings without informing the AG.

Both chambers of the Texas Legislature have approved a measure that will require notification to the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) before a judge can issue a temporary restraining order in relation to an election, a bill that was prompted by a series of confusing judicial actions related to Harris County’s fraught 2022 general election.

“It was occasioned by an election in 2022 where a judge in Harris County held open the polls and didn’t tell the other side,” said Rep. Mike Schofield (R-Houston) of his House Bill (HB) 1475 during a committee hearing last month. “So only one party, which had moved for it, knew that the polls were being held open an additional hour.”

“I wish they’d hold a Super Bowl and not tell the other team the game was on, and my team would win,” quipped Schofield.

The new law stipulates that a district court judge considering an election-related TRO must notify the OAG, wait two hours after providing notification before holding a hearing, and permit OAG staff to participate in the hearing remotely. The two-hour delay may be waived by the OAG after notification, but any TROs issued by a judge in violation of the law will be void.

On Election Day in 2022, the Texas Organizing Project, a progressive civil rights group, sought an emergency hearing and temporary restraining order (TRO) to keep 10 Harris County polling locations open for an extra hour. Multiple county locations were delayed in opening that morning, experienced malfunctioning equipment, were missing personnel, or suffered a shortage of ballot paper.

Following a brief hearing early that evening, District Court Judge Dawn Rogers ordered all county polling sites to remain open until 8 p.m.

After learning of the TRO, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office intervened and requested a reversal of the order, but the judge refused. The OAG then filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court of Texas, which reversed the lower court’s TRO just before 8 p.m. and ordered the county to keep the late-cast ballots separate.

During testimony before the House Elections Committee, Ken Moore said that when Rogers issued the TRO, neither the Harris County Republican Party (HCRP), nor the OAG, nor the Texas Secretary of State knew of the court proceedings.

“The AG moved with all haste to try to stop this, and they couldn’t get to the Supreme Court in time to stop the voting going beyond 7:00,” said Moore, who serves as a State Republican Executive Committee member. “A lot of [election] judges didn’t understand that anything after 7:00 is a provisional ballot, so a lot of these were votes that were regular votes that were regular cast and so it created a lot of chaos.”

The Texas House has also moved to restore to attorney general’s power to prosecute election crimes.

The Texas House has passed legislation to restore the state attorney general’s authority to prosecute election-related crimes—an issue that has taken center stage in the wake of a court ruling and a high-stakes political fight within the Republican Party.

House Bill 5138, authored by State Rep. Matt Shaheen (R–Plano), would allow the attorney general to step in and prosecute election law violations if a local prosecutor fails to act within six months of receiving a law enforcement report. The measure passed the House this week and now awaits further action in the Senate.

The bill comes in response to the 2021 State v. Stephens decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which held that the attorney general did not have independent authority to bring criminal charges under the Election Code.

The ruling was met with fierce opposition from Attorney General Ken Paxton, who made the issue a central theme in last year’s Republican primaries.

All three Court of Criminal Appeals judges who supported the decision and were up for re-election were defeated by Paxton-endorsed challengers.

Election integrity has been one of the Texas GOP’s top legislative priorities this session, with the party supporting HB 5138. Christine Welborn, president of Advancing Integrity, praised the bill as a necessary step to ensure accountability.

“The relatively low number of convictions for election fraud is not due to a lack of fraud, but a lack of prosecutions by local district attorneys,” said Welborn. “HB 5138 would allow the attorney general to once again step in and protect voters when those DAs fail to act. Laws are meaningless unless they are enforced.”

The Texas Senate passed a similar, but not identical, bill last month, so the two versions need to be reconciled.

Naturally, all sorts of of liberal organizations have come out against these bills, to no avail. It seems that if Democrats can’t cheat, they can’t win in Texas…

More Texas 2024 Primary Results Tidbits

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

Now that the dust has settled a bit, here are some more election tidbits from Tuesday’s primary, most gleaned from The Texan’s tracking page.

  • President Trump got more than twice as many primary votes as Joe Biden.
  • Ted Cruz got more than twice as many votes (1,979,327) as all the Democratic Texas Senate candidates combined (964,250). And even more votes than Trump (1,808,823).
  • Trump and Cruz both won all 254 Texas counties. Joe Biden lost sparsely populated Loving County to Frank Lozada one vote to zero, and King County (small and overwhelmingly Republican) either hasn’t reported Democratic votes or didn’t hold a Democratic primary. (Both Trump and Cruz got over 70 votes in Loving County.)
  • Republican incumbent Christi Craddick won her Railroad Commissioner’s race without a runoff at 50.4%.
  • If you compare the topline race primary results of 2022 (Texas Gubernatorial race) to the Presidential primary results of 2024, Republican votes are up just over 365,000 (2,323,754 in 2024 vs. 1,954,172 for 2022), but Democrats are down over 96,000 votes (979,179 for 2024 vs. 1,075,601 for 2022).
  • The Ken Paxton slate for the Court of Criminal Appeals (David Schenck, Gina Parker, and Lee Finley) all won over their respective incumbents fairly handily.
  • The previously reported Gonzalez/Herrera runoff was the only Texas U.S. House race where the Republican incumbent was pulled into a runoff; all the others won with ease.
  • 2022 saw Republican Monica De La Cruz beat Democrat Michelle Vallejo in U.S. House District 15, the only swing district in Texas after redistricting, by nine points. November is going to see a rematch between the two, as both won their primaries. Given the ongoing border crisis (TX15 runs down to Rio Grande Valley) and both Texas Republican and Trump inroads into Hispanic voters, I would not expect Vallejo to improve on her previous showing.
  • Harris County DA Kim Ogg lost her Democratic Party primary to the more radical, Soros-backed Sean Teare. “Although Ogg had financial support from billionaire donor and criminal justice reform activist George Soros during her first campaign in 2016, Soros did not assist Ogg in her 2020 re-election bid and threw his support to Teare this election cycle. The Soros-funded Texas Justice and Public Safety PAC spent over $1.5 million in the final weeks of the campaign to help Teare unseat Ogg.” Democrats also seethed that Ogg let investigations of corruption among Judge Lina Hidalgo’s staffers go forward. How dare she not treat Democrats as above the law? Teare will face Republican nominee Dan Simons, a former assistant district attorney and defense attorney, in November. Bonus: Ogg had trouble voting because her lesbian girlfriend already cast her ballot for her. As commentor Leland noted, does Harris County not follow Texas voter ID laws?
  • Travis County residents are evidently delighted with more rapes and murders, as they just voted to keep Jose Garza DA.
  • School choice was a big winner Tuesday.

    The 2024 primary election was a major success for school choice advocates in Texas. Several opponents of education reform lost outright, others went to runoffs, and still more were electorally weakened.

    Corey DeAngelis, a school choice advocate and head of the American Federation for Children Victory Fund, released a statement touting six wins and four forced runoffs in the 13 races where his PAC was engaged.

    Throughout multiple called special sessions in 2023, the Republican-led House alternatively delayed and killed Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts to create school choice in Texas. Ultimately, these efforts culminated with 21 Republicans voting for an amendment by John Raney (R-College Station) to strip school choice from an omnibus education measure.

    Accounting for retirements and with the runoffs still to be decided, only a handful of incumbent Republicans who sided with the teachers’ unions to kill school choice during the legislative session will be returning to Austin in 2025.

    As covered yesterday, anti-school choice incumbents defeated include Reggie Smith, Travis Clardy, Glenn Rogers, Ernest Bailes and Steve Allison, while those driven into run-offs include Justin Holland, John Kuempel, Gary VanDeaver and DeWayne Burns

  • Some State Board of Education news. “Pat Hardy, a former teacher and a veteran representing District 11, which covers parts of Fort Worth, lost her seat to challenger Brandon Hall, a youth pastor.” Also: “Another incumbent, Tom Maynard of District 10, which includes Williamson and Bell counties, will go into a May 28 runoff against Round Rock school board member Mary Bone, who describes herself as a conservative champion for Texas kids.” If Bone wins, she’ll probably make a good State Board of Education member, but Round Rock ISD desperately needs more conservatives on the board.
  • Williamson County primary results. I didn’t see any surprises there.
  • Things that make you go “Hmmmm”: “Potential Speaker Candidate Hired by Bank with Ties to Bonnen and Phelan.”

    A lawmaker rumored to be eyeing the speakership in the Texas House is employed by a bank that has connections to current House Speaker Dade Phelan and disgraced former Speaker Dennis Bonnen.

    State Rep. Cody Harris, a Republican from Palestine, was first elected to the House in 2018. At the time, he was a real estate broker for Liberty Land & Ranch LLC.

    In August of 2021, however, Harris added a new item to his resumé—Vice President of Business Development for Third Coast Bank.

    The career change is notable given the bank’s ties to the current and former speaker.

    In late 2019, Third Coast Bank acquired Heritage Bank, where Bonnen had served as President, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer. He currently sits on Third Coast’s Board of Directors.

    Phelan’s brother Lan Phelan was a director of Third Coast from 2013 until at least 2016, according to filings with the secretary of state. A 2021 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed that the bank’s Beaumont location was leased from Phelan’s family investment firm.

    Additionally, the most recent personal financial statement from Dade Phelan shows that he owns shares in Third Coast.