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HOUSTON: A federal judge in Texas scheduled an emergency hearing for Monday (November 2) on whether Houston officials illegally allowed direct voting and should cast more than 100,000 votes in the Democratic-leaning area.
In a short order, US District Judge Andrew Hanen in Houston agreed on Friday to hear arguments from a Republican state lawmaker and others who said votes already cast at direct voting sites in the Houston area should be rejected.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday by plaintiffs, including Steve Hotze, a conservative activist, and State Representative Steve Toth. They accused Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, a Democrat, of exceeding his constitutional authority by allowing direct voting as an alternative to walk-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.
Harris County, home to approximately 4.7 million people, is the third most populous county in the United States. It currently has 10 self-service voting sites, which are available to all voters.
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The lawsuit came after the Texas Supreme Court, one of the most conservative state courts in the United States, rejected similar proposals to stop direct voting in Harris County.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to “reject any vote that it believes was cast in violation of the Texas Election Code” and to “require that all memory cards from the 10 drive-thru polling places be secured and not entered or downloaded into the Tally machine until this Court issues an order on this complaint. “
Hanen was appointed by President George W. Bush, a Republican.
The request is “totally unreasonable,” Democratic groups, including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said on Friday in a motion asking to intervene in the case.
“The plaintiffs are asking this court to cause chaos in Texas elections by invalidating the votes of more than 100,000 eligible Texas voters who cast their ballots at self-service polling places at the invitation of county officials and based on the Texas Supreme Court’s decision to allow driving -through voting to continue, ”the groups said.
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Michael Morley, a professor of electoral law at Florida State University, called the lawsuit unsubstantiated and said it proposed an “extreme remedy.”
“I believe the county has a strong legal foundation under state law to implement these voting alternatives during a pandemic,” Morley said. “However, even if the court disagrees, a remedy is most likely purely prospective: prohibit the continued use of these mechanisms while still counting votes already cast.”
Texas, the second-largest state in the United States, is a traditionally Republican state, but polls show that President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden are close, with more than 9 million votes already cast, dwarfing the total turnout of 2016.
