HD 73: Macias Case Set For Trial

After attempting to delay his own day in court through a motion to recuse a visiting judge, State Rep. Nathan Macias (R-Bulverde) was given a trial date of May 19 on his challenge to the March 4 GOP primary. Macias claims that there was double voting in his 17-vote defeat at the hands of challenger Doug Miller.

Of course, that’s not all Macias is claiming:

He also claimed convicted felons and mentally disabled people may have voted, and he alleges mistakes or improprieties by election officials, including sign-in sheets and mail-in absentee ballots lacking required signatures by election officials. He also complained that one of Miller’s relatives helped hand-count paper ballots in Gillespie County.

I am particularly interested in his claim that “mentally disabled people” may have voted. Why? Because that will be damned near impossible to prove, or Macias’ attorneys are misinterpreting what voter registration law actually is with regard to mental incompetence.

First of all, “mentally disabled” people, ie, someone with mild mental retardation or some similar mental condition–even dementia–can legally cast a ballot in Texas unless a court has declared them mentally incompetent. So, if Macias’ case-in-chief involves a bunch of witnesses testifying that Betty Sue and John Jack suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease and shouldn’t be voting, or that Billy Joe has a plate in his head and is “slow,” I wish him the best of luck because he’ll be laughed out of court.

Second, even if people who were declared mentally incompetent by a court voted, I think Macias will be hard pressed to prove that. While the Health and Safety Code does provide that mental commitment hearings are public, I do not believe that the results of those proceedings–the judgments–are necessarily public records. Furthermore, just because an individual may have been declared mentally incompetent and committed to a mental health facility at one point in time, I do not believe that the judgment of mental incompetency is permanent. Considering that the procedure for involuntary commitments and declarations of mental incompetence used for people who suffer from disorders like anorexia and bulimia is the same for people who see little pink Christina Aguilera monsters, it is clearly possible that someone declared mentally incompetent two years ago is now, in fact, fully competent.

We’ll see, I suppose.