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EDINBURG — After three weeks of trial, a judge has overturned the results of a May 28 Democratic Primary runoff for the Hidalgo County Precinct 3, Place 1 justice of the peace seat.
Visiting Senior Judge Jose Manuel Bañales not only overturned the election that initially saw incumbent Sonia Treviño win by just 31 votes, he also found sufficient evidence to instead declare Ramon Segovia the true winner.
“The Court heard the evidence and arguments of counsel and found that it could ascertain the true outcome of the election,” Bañales stated in a two-page final judgment handed down Wednesday.
“The Court found that 78 illegal votes were cast for Contestee Trevino (sic) and that 3 illegal votes were cast for Segovia. … Because the Court finds that Contestant Segovia received 44 more true votes than Contestee Treviño, the Court hereby declares Ramon Segovia the winner…” he further states.
Speaking after the trial ended Wednesday, Gilberto Hinojosa, of Brownsville, said he was happy with the outcome declaring his client the winner.
“We were very pleased. I believe the judge made the right decision. He listened very carefully to the evidence in this case, followed the law and found what I thought was very obvious from the evidence,” Hinojosa said.
That “obvious” finding Hinojosa referred to was an unprecedented amount of “illegal votes” that had been disqualified from the race at a level that came as a shock even to an attorney with decades of experience litigating election contests.
“There was a lot of illegal voters cast by the supporters of Judge Sonia Treviño and that a lot of the conduct in this election was something that I personally had never seen before in my life,” Hinojosa said.
Much of the case hinged on the theory that campaign workers or volunteers for the Sonia Treviño campaign had provided assistance to voters that were not legally eligible to receive help.
Texas law lays out a narrow list of qualifications that allow a voter to receive help in the voting booth, such as if they cannot read or write in English or Spanish, or if they have a disability.
But, as Hilda Salinas, the Hidalgo County elections administrator, testified on Monday, poll workers cannot ask a voter what their disability may be when they ask for help.
Nonetheless, as he heard testimony from dozens of witnesses, Bañales repeatedly disqualified their vote, then — one by one — asked which candidate they had voted for.
The judge heard from naturalized citizens who had difficulty with English, from people with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, from functionally illiterate people, from elderly voters who spoke of how the ballot machine technology intimidated them.
And, in at least three instances, the judge heard testimony from people who are so intellectually disabled he said the coercion of their votes seemed criminal.
After three weeks of such testimony, the judge disqualified 86 ballots.
Of those, he found 78 had been cast for Treviño and another three had been cast for Segovia. He could not make a definitive determination on the few remaining disqualified votes.
But for Rick Salinas, the Mission attorney who served as Treviño’s lead counsel, that’s only half the story.
Salinas doesn’t disagree with Hinojosa that scores of west county voters received help at the polls. Where he does differ is in his opinion over the legality of that assistance.
As the trial came to a conclusion Wednesday, Salinas said the real losers are the voters themselves.
“This is clearly a case where there was some gamesmanship and that worked against the voters,” Salinas said.
Since the trial began on July 15, Salinas has contended that Ramon Segovia and his political workers and volunteers also assisted large numbers of voters cast their ballots.
But Segovia’s campaign simply didn’t assist “enough” voters to win the runoff outright, the attorney said.
“They were running around assisting voters. They were picking people up and they were assisting voters. I don’t believe that’s criminal,” Salinas said of the Segovia campaign.
“But don’t lie to me. Don’t tell me it’s raining when you’re peeing on my back, you know what I mean?” he added.
Like Hinojosa, Salinas had planned to call dozens of people to the stand to prove that they, too, had received assistance at the polls.
If Hinojosa’s strategy was to call those assisted votes illegal, then Salinas hoped he could similarly chip away at Segovia’s tally by proving the same thing with ballots cast for the challenger.
But late last week, Bañales issued a ruling stating that Treviño and her attorneys could not call nearly any of the 170 people they had subpoenaed, finding that Salinas’ legal team did not properly disclose what the witnesses may have testified to.
It was a decision that shocked Salinas.
Election contests are different from most civil litigation. They operate on an accelerated timeline. Everything from naming witnesses, to rendering decisions, to appealing judgments, it’s all on a statutory fast track because of the strict deadlines laid out in the Texas Election Code.
“I have never seen a … judge deny the parties a right to air out their differences,” Salinas said.
That ruling crippled Treviño’s ability to not only prove the similar conduct she says her opponent engaged in, it also prevented her from defending herself.
Salinas pointed to the testimony of one voter in particular, a 25-year-old intellectually disabled man who testified that a woman picked him up from his adult daycare center against his will and took him to the polls.
The man further testified that the woman had told him he would get in trouble with “the law” if he resisted.
While questioning the man, Hinojosa repeatedly spoke of that woman as Ilianna Parras and claimed she works as a clerk in Treviño’s court.
Bañales, the judge would go on to refer to the coercion of the young man’s vote as one of the “most egregious” voter abuses he had ever seen, adding that it may have been criminal.
But Parras was one of the many witnesses whom Judge Bañales excluded from testifying.
“That’s why the judge’s comments without hearing the other side of the coin are somewhat unfair because we didn’t really get to hear from Mrs. Parras,” Salinas said.
The attorney further denied that Treviño had any knowledge of such conduct, saying she was “floored” when she heard the man’s testimony.
Soon after the judge rendered his judgment Wednesday morning, Salinas initiated the process for an accelerated appeal.
Despite the judge’s ruling, the attorney is still hopeful that his client’s name, not Segovia’s, will be on the November ballot.
“The only way he wins is if the (13th) Court of Appeals affirms the judgment. And even if they affirm the judgment… (Treviño) wins anyways because he won’t make the ballot in time. The issue will be moot,” Salinas said.
“He’s running out of time.”
PREVIOUS COVERAGE:
Judge denies recusal in Hidalgo County JP election contest trial
Recusal requested in Hidalgo County JP contest after filing error
Intellectually disabled man forced to vote in Hidalgo County JP race
Testimony begins in Hidalgo County JP election contest trial
