Houston, Texas -Houston - Jon Rosenthal has seen some tight races, however his re-election to Texas State House in November in the Houston district that was drawn to be virtually a guarantee for Democrats did not happen to be one of the races. The Mr. Rosenthal won by 15 points.

It was unexpected when his Republican opponent challenged the results and asked for the State Legislature to order a new election.

A surprise occurred late on Thursday night when one of the Republican candidate for Harris County's highest executive post within Harris County, which includes Houston, announced that she would challenge her narrower loss of around 18,000 votes, against her more progressive Democrat who is currently the county's Chief Executive, Lina Hidalgo. On Friday, more than twelve unsuccessful Republican candidate had filed lawsuits to challenge the outcome of their contests.

Election Day in Harris County, Texas' largest county was marred by a variety of issues at the polling stations such as those that were closed late and some that were unable to find the paper needed to print ballots. The judge ordered that the polls be open for an additional time to make up for the loss; after that, they were able to stop the extra voting. Texas Supreme Court stepped in and stopped the extra vote.

Republicans who have been keeping an eye out for electoral issues in elections across the nation, took a stance on the challenges that are affecting Harris County, which is growing into an increasingly Democratic stronghold. Candidates challenged the validity of the results in a costly and bitter campaign that did not succeed in dislodging Mrs. Hidalgo and a slate of Democratic judges.

"It is inexcusable that after two months, the public is no further along in knowing if, and to what extent, votes were suppressed," said Alexandra del Moral Mealer when explaining why she decided to appeal her defeat in the election to Mrs. Hidalgo, adding that her argument to the challenge was "fundamentally about protecting the right to vote in free and fair elections."

Contests for election are not unusual in Texas with a lot of down-ballot elections in smaller counties where margins of victory are usually quite small. However, the contests that were faced in Harris County appeared to be unusually broad in their attempts to question the legitimacy of the process of voting in an election that included 1.1 millions of votes. The county was the target of the calls of state leaders such as Gov. Greg Abbott, for an inquiry into the conduct of the county's administration in the conduct of its election. The district attorney of the local area launched an inquiry in November.

The contests for Harris County's elections Harris County have at times like the ones by Arizona from the Republican Governor candidate, Kari Lake, who is seeking to reverse her defeat by claiming that officials from one county intentionally disenfranchised her voters. A judge rejected her claims last month , citing a the lack of evidence.

However, the current contests in Texas have no precedents as stated by that the Harris County attorney, Christian Menefee who is who is a Democrat. "To my knowledge, this is the first election contest filed in Harris County that is wholly focused on these kinds of process failures," Mr. Menefee said in an interview.

The vast Texas county has been shifting more strongly toward Democrats during the last couple of elections, largely following the direction of the other significant Texas cities.

Due to a myriad of reasons, the county has had a difficult time conducting elections with ease, attracting repeated attention from Republican lawmakers at the State Capitol. The size of the county has been difficult with a territory similar to Delaware which has 2.5 millions registered voters and over 700 polling locations. The county has been struggling with the newly mandated systems for voting and hasn't had a consistent direction from its elections office, which has had three administrators in place from 2020.

A review of the 2020 elections that was carried out by the secretary of state revealed a myriad of problems and instances of in which Harris County did not handle its electronic records in a proper manner however there not evidence that there were widespread instances of fraud.

The county took a number of steps adopted during the coronavirus epidemic to facilitate the ability to vote in Houston like the restriction of 24-hour voting hours and polling stations with drive-throughswere also met with criticism from Republicans who claimed that the changes resulted in a less secure election. The majority of Republicans in the State Legislature, in its final session, took measures to curtail a lot of these measures.

In Election Day in November, the county faced issues in a variety of polling stations, including a few that were a significant delay in their opening times, as well as others which reported having run out of ballots in paper.

A judge directed polling stations in the county to stay open for an additional time after the Texas Organizing Project, a non-profit, filed suit against the issue, alleging that voters were being denied from casting their ballots. It was the Texas Supreme Court stepped in and stopped the decision in response to a challenge by Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general Ken Paxton. The court eventually permitted about 2000 voting ballots used during additional voting period to be counted in those counted in the final official report.

The county's election manager, Clifford Tatum, has stood up for the election and claimed that the issues that were raised are minor in a well-run election. "Overall, Election Day was a success," the post-election report by the office of Mr. Tatum's department concluded.

However, the report, published this week, also revealed that the county's system for voting had "an immediate need of upgrades or replacements" to address issues with software, streamline the process of voting and establish an election system that allows the administrator to be aware at any time if issues identified at polling stations were being fixed.

It is believed that the Harris County Republican Party has been focusing on a wide range of issues that were raised during Election Day, including not just sites that were void of paper ballots, but other sites where poll workers improperly put paper ballots in voting machines.

In the report the office of the election administrator stated that the officials of the voting centers in 68 reported that they ran over the original allocation of papers on Election Day, and that only 61 of them reported that they received delivery of paper.

However, it was unclear what percentage of voters were refused entry due to shortage of paper, in part due to the fact that, according to the report, a few of the elections judge "declined to speak after reportedly being advised not to do so by the Harris County Republican Party."

A spokeswoman from the County Republican Party, Genevieve Carter denied receiving any instructions. "We encouraged them to provide their firsthand account of any issues that occurred," she explained. "Our goal is to get to the bottom of what went wrong during this election."

The leaders and lawyers of the party haven't claimed they have the evidence to prove that their candidates could have won. Instead, they've claimed that the magnitude of the problems that occurred on Election Day were so great (including, the claim, permitting voters to cast votes who were not qualified to do so throughout the entire county -- the real results of the election cannot be known. They insist that elections be held again. (More than two-thirds of votes were cast at the time of early voting or via mail but however, not during Election Day.)

"We have a systematic cancer that has invaded our election process," stated the county chair of the Republican Party, Cindy Siegel.

Democrats have not yet raised formal challenges to the election, but privately, they have complained that numerous issues in the electoral process in Houston were not adequately dealt with, giving Republicans an incentive to pass restrictive legislation and, more recently, elections.

Candidates are the only ones who are able to initiate contests So far, at most 14 have taken part which includes the candidate Ms. Mealer, a first-time candidate who was able to receive millions of donations from Houston's top donors as well as Mr. Rosenthal's opponent Michael May; a candidate for county district clerk and nine Republican Judicial candidates.

One of the first challenges was made by a candidate for judicial office, Erin Lunceford, who was defeated by 2,743 votes and filed suit in the last quarter of in the year. Ms. Lunceford's complaint contains 19 claims that raise issues concerning the way that voting was handled or counted during the November election . The suit requests the court to annul the court-appointed elections in addition to "declare that the true outcome of the election cannot be ascertained." Ms. Lunceford is represented by Andy Taylor, an election lawyer representing the County Republican Party.

Ryan MacLeod, a lawyer for the Democrat who took the election, Tamika Craft, described the lawsuit in court papers as an "stunt to make headlines" after the election was canceled, and claimed the suit was a "stunt to make headlines" after an election "no allegations are supported by facts" and that there was no evidence given.

The latest challenge made on Thursday to the result of the race to be Harris County judge -- effectively, the county's chief executive Ms. Mealer's lawyers focused on the issues of the paper ballot in arguing that they were concentrated in high-turnout Republican regions and County officials "suppressed the voting rights" of the residents living in these areas.

The woman. Hidalgo's office directed concerns to county attorneys the attorney, Mr. Menefee, who described the issues to the county's constitution as "frivolous attempts to overturn the votes of more than a million residents."

In contrast to other contests and challenges. May's race was a loss to his opponent Mr. Rosenthal does not go before a judge because it is an State House race. However, according to Texas laws, it will be scrutinized by the state legislature, who will meet in the month of March. The House may determine that the appeal is unfounded and dismiss it immediately, or opt to investigate the allegations gathering evidence and testimony before taking a decision about whether the vote should be thrown out and a new election scheduled.

He. May, in his petition, mentioned the issue of paper ballots and claimed that eligible voters were denied access and not able to vote. He did not provide any evidence and has not responded to a request to comment.

He. Rosenthal said he believed the contest was frivolous, and that allowing it continue could result in some future problems for lawmakers.

"If there is life given to this, and there is no consequence for bringing something this frivolous, you're setting up for election challenges across the state," he added. "You could have dozens of challenges per cycle."
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