The Herald-Zeitung

Whether due to human error or outright fraud, Dist. 73 State Rep. Nathan Macias is claiming in a civil lawsuit that the results of the March 4 primary election are invalid.

The current legislator for the four-county district filed suit Monday, calling for a new election to be held after he lost to challenger Doug Miller in the primary and subsequent recount by 17 votes.

Macias alleges the election hinged on hundreds of illegal votes, rendering the results unusable.

“We just want a fair and honest election,” said Macias’ attorney Rene Diaz. “This one was tainted by a series of very serious illegalities.”

What Diaz termed the “linchpin” of those illegalities was a large number of people across the district who voted in both the Republican and Democratic primaries.

Using statistics provided by the Texas secretary of state’s office, Diaz said he was able to identify 253 voters across the district who cast a ballot in both parties’ primary using unique voter identification numbers.

“That violates the whole principal of ‘one person, one vote,’” Diaz said. “In an election that’s only separated by 17 votes, that’s a critical number.”

“Double voting” is prohibited by the Texas Election Code; the suit claims all of those votes should be thrown out since the public has a constitutional right to ballot secrecy, and it would be impossible to determine which candidate won the majority of the votes legally cast.

While the double votes were the largest infraction listed in the lawsuit, Diaz said there were irregularities found in all four counties — Bandera, Comal, Kendall and Gillespie.

Macias won every county in the primary except Gillespie, where he lost by about 1,000 votes.

A large number of those came from the town of Harper in Precinct 5, which wound up tipping the election in Miller’s favor. Diaz said the lawsuit is seeking to possibly throw out all of the results of that ballot box.

Gillespie elections officials had to issue emergency paper ballots, which led to the count not being finished until nearly 4 a.m., and when it had finally wrapped up, Macias had unofficially lost the election by 38 votes.

“Before that one box came in, the rest of the results were in and Nathan Macias was winning by a comfortable margin,” Diaz said.

Diaz said the time it took to count the votes and other circumstances surrounding the handling of that particular box were “indicators of possible fraud.”

The other infractions listed in the suit generally pertain to election officials failing to sign ballots and other documents.

In Comal County, the suit claims 44 absentee ballots should be ruled invalid because County Clerk Joy Streater failed to sign them.

Streater said the office was filled with mail-in ballots, up to 400 in a single day, and some of the ballots likely didn’t get stamped with her official signature. She also said that probably doesn’t affect the intent of the voter.

“Did some of them not get a stamp on them? Probably. That happens in every election,” Streater said. “If you want to nitpick every election, you probably would have to throw out all of them. There’s just an element of human error.”

She estimated that Comal County taxpayers would likely have to pay around $50,000 to hold another election should the suit win in court.

Included in the litany of potential illegalities are three provisional ballots from Comal County which were not signed by a ballot board judge. The suit also lists three emergency ballots in Gillespie County as invalid after not being signed by the proper authorities and claimed that a sign-in sheet was not signed by an election judge, which should nullify 23 other votes.

The trial schedule to sort out the matter likely will be accelerated, Diaz said, to have the suit settled in a timely manner. He said he hoped to have a trial called for by the end of the month and possibly have the proceedings finished in time for a May 10 election.

LAWSUIT BREAKDOWN State Rep. Nathan Macias’ civil lawsuit: • Calls for new election. • Alleges voter irregularities in Comal, Bandera, Kendall and Gillespie counties. • Claims more than 250 people voted illegally in both Republican and Democratic primaries. • Says nearly 70 votes are invalid because certain documents were not signed by the proper authorities.