Mattress Mack suing Harris County for public election records
HOUSTON - After enduring back-to-back, major Harris County elections deeply plagued by delay and dysfunction, Houston icon Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale wants to know what went wrong.
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Additionally, he looks to see whether the answer lies in government records – records to which all Texans are entitled to access, but Harris County has, thus far, refused to release.
"What's wrong with sunshine? Shine the light on it!" said McIngvale. "This is not about political parties. It's about the election process."
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"We are going to make the election process fair for everybody because we firmly believe every Texan should have a right to vote, and their vote should be counted," he continued. "And we want to know from the Harris County Election Board whether this was incompetence, negligence, corruption, or a combination of all three."
Mack has partnered with well-known public integrity investigator Wayne Dolcefino in a lawsuit seeking records from Harris County Election Administrator Clifford Tatum.
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Through access to Tatum’s official e-mail and text messages, McIngvale and Dolcefino hope to learn what, if any, effort was made to remedy voting machine malfunction and a widespread shortage of paper ballots on election day.
"Harris County voters have a right to know right now what went wrong and whether Clifford Tatum who is the election administrator, who has a history of botched elections, botched this one," said Dolcefino.
Attorney Jeff Diamant says the shorting of paper ballots to dozens of Harris County voting places, accidental or not, is particularly problematic.
"So if we have historical data that shows we have 1,500 people who generally vote in this area, and we send them 500 ballots, we know we are headed to a problem already," he said. "These records will help us understand what did they know when did they know it, and what, if anything, did they do to solve the problems."
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Meantime, a spokesperson for Tatum says the Election Administrator is awaiting guidance from the Texas Attorney General.
"The Attorney General’s office has 45 working days from the day after the request to respond," said Nidia Hakim, Communications Director for the Harris County Elections Administration. "As of today, the office has not received an opinion on how to proceed with these particular public information requests.
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Any suggestion that the Harris County Elections Administrator’s Office lacks transparency is false," Hakim concluded.