Lunceford's case is one of 21 other election contests filed by fellow Republican candidates who lost their respective races. In a summary judgment, Peeples also ruled to dismiss 15 of the lawsuits. Before receiving a ruling, three of the other former Republican candidates opted to drop their cases.
Most notably, former GOP Harris County Judge challenger Alexandra del Moral Mealer, who had initially filed her election contest lawsuit earlier this year in January.
According to Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, one of the election contests remains without a ruling, as the case against Republican challenger Tami Pierce and incumbent Democrat Judge DaSean Jones is awaiting judgment from the Texas Court of Appeals on a motion to dismiss the case altogether.
Lunceford filed a lawsuit to challenge the results of her race against Craft – who won by 2,743 votes – alleging that due to the ballot paper shortages and technical issues that occurred at more than 20 polling locations, voters could not cast their ballots.
The defeated GOP candidate’s legal team later expanded this accusation, calling into question the legality of thousands of votes from ballots mailed in, provisional ballots or those cast without all of the voter information required.
Peeples, a visiting judge from Bexar County, upheld the overall race results, saying the margin of votes was not enough to warrant reordering a new election. However, he did rule that many of the claims Lunceford and her team made during the over week-long trial were accurate – that Harris County election officials had made mistakes and violated the Texas Election Code.
These discrepancies resulted in about 2,041 votes that should not have been counted because they were from residents who lived outside the county, sent in provisional and mail ballots that lacked the required signatures, or were sent out late and did not include the necessary voter information or had canceled voter registrations.
Peeples estimated that roughly 250 and 850 voters left the vote centers that reported ballot paper problems or equipment issues and did not vote in the election. According to his analysis, about 2,891 votes were affected by ballot paper shortages, operation issues and related discrepancies.
However, because there was no way to know how many exact voters did not vote between the estimated range, he ultimately ruled that there were not enough votes to reorder a new election.
One of the main arguments that Lunceford’s legal team tried to make was that the instruction to rescan ballots when the second page couldn’t process resulted in double votes for races featured on the first page of the ballot – where Lunceford’s race was.
Peeples said in his ruling that this claim was not supported by evidence.
The judge touched on another large-scale issue of the Harris County Administrator’s Office accepting the temporary restraining order to keep some polling locations open for an extra hour.
Peeples wrote that he was “deeply concerned” with how the order was granted and agreed upon, as it was issued in a non-contested hearing.
Although the judge did not agree with how the order was handled, such as a private matter, he ruled it was not illegal to agree to the order. He added that 325 net votes were cast for Craft when the order was active, none of which were illegal.
Lunceford is expected to appeal Peeples’s ruling. However, as of Thursday night, she had not.
Menefee’s statement on Thursday’s court ruling:
“I’m glad the judge confirmed what we’ve all known for a year now. These Republican candidates lost the 2022 election. We at the county have moved on. Voters have moved on. I hope that the Harris County Republican Party will move on.”
