Yanez Supreme Court Filing Doesn’t Contain Enough Valid Signatures

Appeals court justice Linda Yanez–the one who was complaining about the law requiring statewide judicial candidates to obtain signatures to get on the ballot–may not have enough valid signatures to secure a place on the ballot for her race for Texas Supreme Court Place 8 according to a document obtained by Capitol Annex.

In a letter to State Democratic Chairman Boyd Ritchie, Neil G. Baron, counsel for State District Judge Susan Criss’ campaign, alleges that Yanez’s campaign has submitted an insufficient number of signatures from Appeals Court Districts 1 and 14.

Baron wrote:

Prior to officially filing, Judge Criss’ campaign was informed by a high ranking party official of two facts regarding the petitions:

1. The state party staff would not have the time to verify the signatures submitted by the Democratic candidates; and

2. Each Democratic candidate could be assured the Republican Party would obtain copies and check the accuracy of each signature the Democrats submitted.

Before submitting Judge Criss’ signatures, her campaign staff verified more than enough signatures in every district by matching name, date of birth, address and voter registration numbers. Only 700 signatures were required and over 1,600 were submitted. The Texas Democratic Party VAN system was used to verify accuracy.

The Criss campaign also performed a similar accuracy check on the signatures contained in the petitions of her primary opponent Justice Linda Yanez. Based on the copies of the Yanez petitions furnished by the party the Criss campaign discovered numerous potential deficiencies with the Yanez petitions.

In most districts very few additional names were submitted in addition to the required 50, leaving very little margin for error. In fact less than 800 statewide signatures were submitted by the Yanez campaign.

In Districts 1 and 14, the petitions reflect that the Yanez campaign included seven 7 signatures of registered voters from Montgomery County, 2 from Jasper and one signature from Liberty County (which are located in District 9 not 1 or 14) and one signature from Williamson County (located in District 10 not 1 or 14) but were designated by the Yanez campaign as being from the Districts of 1 and 14. The Yanez campaign included these signatures in their total for Districts 1 and 14. When you subtract these eleven signatures the Yanez campaign has submitted insufficient signatures from Districts 1 and 14.

In addition to the concerns with insufficient signatures submitted from Districts 1 and 14, there are a number of other potential problems with the signatures submitted by the Yanez campaign.

1. Some signatures were not submitted with either the voter’s date of birth or the voter registration number;

2. No signatures were submitted with voter registration numbers and numerous signatures submitted with dates of birth were not able to be verified as signatures of registered voters by use of the VAN system.

3. Some signatures of voters were found on the VAN system but the dates of birth listed by the signer did not match the names in the VAN system.

4. Signatures were submitted as being from one district when they are in fact from another.

That’s not all:

In addition to the problems with insufficient signatures submitted from Districts 1 and 14, we believe that the Yanez petitions may also contain signatures that are not verifiable as valid resulting in submission of less than the statutorily required number of signatures from Districts 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 12.

So, Yanez has about 72 hours to correct these problems. If she doesn’t and her certification stands, there are a couple of things that could happen. The worst-case, however, is this: if Yanez’s filing were unchallenged by Criss or the Republicans, and Yanez were to win, the Republicans could ultimately sue to keep her off the ballot.