Late Thursday night, Republican challenger Alexandra del Moral Mealer dropped a pending lawsuit challenging the November 2022 election results of her race against Democrat incumbent Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.
Mealer took to X, formerly Twitter, and alleged that the county had “stonewalled” her efforts and restricted access to information needed to meet her “legal burden.”
Mealer added that from the documents and records she could review, she found “systematic and widespread violations of the Texas Election Code” during last year’s election.
The Republican opponent’s decision to drop the case comes as Hidalgo is due back from a leave of absence to receive clinical treatment for depression. After recently lengthening her time away from office to partake in residential care, Hidalgo will return on October 2.
Despite losing against Hidalgo by a wide margin of over 18,000 votes, Mealer’s legal counsel filed the petition earlier this year on January 6. The suit initially alleged that thousands of voters could not vote due to a shortage of ballot papers at around 20 polling locations on Election Day.
However, Mealer later amended the lawsuit to include additional claims that thousands of ballots were not properly counted. One of Mealer’s now former attorneys, Elizabeth Alvarez, took issue with these allegations and filed a letter last month in court, stating she did not support Mealer’s new claims.
Although Alvarez no longer representing Mealer in the lawsuit, Mealer proceeded with legal action under new legal counsel, Houston-based attorneys Steven J. Mitby and Michael K. Barnhart.
Mealer’s lawsuit was one of the 21 other election contest lawsuits filed by GOP candidates who lost their respective races in the November 2022 election.
Last month, the first of these election contest lawsuits, brought forth by Republican candidate Erin Lunceford, went to trial. Lunceford lost to Democrat 189th District Judge Tamika Craft by 2,743 votes – one of the closer races contested.
Similar to Mealer, other GOP candidates have opted to drop their lawsuits, including Sartaj Bal and Dan Spjut, who attempted to unseat Democrat incumbent Judges Toria Finch and Juanita Jackson for Harris County Criminal Court at Law No.9 and No.10 judicial seats, respectively.
Spjut dropped his lawsuit earlier than Bal, who followed in Mealer’s footsteps and dropped his case on Thursday.
County officials had spoken out against these attempts to challenge the November 2022 election results amid yearslong GOP scrutiny of how Harris County operates countywide elections.
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee issued the following statement:
“I’m glad Mrs. Mealer finally realized what a waste of time and resources it was to litigate this case. She didn’t win the election and she wasn’t going to win the election contest, yet she insisted on continuing to spread conspiracy theories in an attempt to overturn the will of the voters. It’s time for the other losing Republican candidates to drop their lawsuits as well.
I look forward to putting this behind us and focusing on moving the county forward. With Early Voting just weeks away, I’m committed to supporting the voters of Harris County and doing my part to ensure a fair election.”
This is a developing story and will be updated as needed.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
