Defeated candidates question vote counting errors
EDINBURG — Alma Garza begrudgingly acknowledged an election day loss to Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra just after 9 p.m. Tuesday.
But within a matter of hours, she and several of the county’s other losing candidates sought to take their concessions back.
A tallying error that developed during vote counting briefly threw several Democratic primary results into question and left lingering suspicions Wednesday in the minds of some hopefuls that the voters’ voices had not been heard.
Now, Garza and her cohorts hope to have the entire election reviewed by the Texas Secretary of State and the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
“This is why people get so discouraged from voting,” she said. “These things keep happening, and they feel that their votes aren’t being counted.”
Results posted at 8:35 p.m. — showing all of the county’s 140 precincts reporting — indicated Garza lost her bid to become the county’s district attorney by nearly 9,000 cast ballots, or just less than 18 percent of the vote.
But the county elections department later retracted those numbers, saying early vote totals had been counted twice and only 13 precincts were accounted for in the numbers they had previously said were final.
Despite the initial confusion, election workers started the process over, recounted the votes and posted the revised final totals by 11:22 p.m., said Yvonne Ramón, the county’s election administrator, during a news conference Wednesday.
“I decided we should clear up all the votes and start again,” she said. “I’d prefer that we were late with our totals but correct.”
Ramón’s confidence, however, was not shared by Garza and other candidates who lost competitive races by modest margins.
Hidalgo County Commissioner Oscar Garza — who lost a re-election bid to Joseph Palacios by 9 percentage points, or less than 1,000 votes — first conceded Tuesday evening, then un-conceded and ultimately resigned himself to his loss Wednesday. He is not related to the candidate for district attorney.
Hilda Caceres, vying to unseat incumbent Delta-area Justice of the Peace Espiridion “Speedy” Jackson, first thought she had won her race when the initial vote totals were released only to realize she had ultimately lost by 40 votes when the corrected totals were posted.
“First they told us we won by a thousand votes, then they told us we lost,” said Cain Caceres, her ex-husband and close friend. “How can anyone have faith in a system like that?”
But Alma Garza, a 54-year-old criminal defense attorney, took the strongest stance Wednesday, hovering over elections office staff until 1:30 a.m. and questioning what exactly went wrong. The final vote tally showed her losing to the incumbent Guerra by a smaller margin of 16 percentage points, or slightly more than 6,000 votes.
She has since called for outside review of the vote totals by filing a formal complaint with state authorities.
“The vote of a person is very precious,” she said. “The voters want to be heard, and I don’t think they were in this election. The numbers just don’t add up.”
Still, Ramón insisted Wednesday that voters could be confident in the final vote totals authorized by the county and promised to make herself available to anyone who still had questions about the results.
“The elections department has integrity,” she said. “We came forward transparent. We came forward with the facts.”
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Monitor staff writer Jared Janes contributed to this report.
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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 587-9377.
