In Loving County, where there are fewer people than anywhere else in the state, your vote really counts.
There were 110 registered voters in the county during the 2022 elections. Some races there were decided by less than a dozen votes.
But a state appeals court recently took a close look at whether some of the county’s voters actually resided in Loving County, and the result could mean a new election for district clerk.
Cameron Thompson has been covering the story for Courthouse News Service and spoke to the Texas Standard about the details of the case.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: The state’s eighth Court of Appeals examined a county clerk election from 2022 and went so far as to overturn the results. How come?
Cameron Thompson: So what the courts found was that 10 people in the county had actually voted illegally, due to some complications with with the definition of residency in the Texas election code. So the district court immediately overturned two of the elections that happened there because the margin was less than 10 votes.
The appeals court then overruled part of the district decision and overturned a third election after they found two people who should have been counted that weren’t.
So when we talk about illegal voting, I think people get real suspicious about that. But these were some complicated cases having to do with really the definition of residency. And it doesn’t seem like anybody, intention-wise, was going out to “steal a vote.” How did the court wrestle with the definition of residency?
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. This wasn’t illegal voting in the sense you hear with national talking points a lot. These were people who have some connection to the county. A lot of them have family there. In some cases, they lived there for a long time in the past that moved away for some reason.
You have a lot of people then coming back to town for the elections and voting, and a lot of people who stay there more permanently take issue with that. And so when these elections come down to just a few votes, that’s an area ripe for dispute.
It doesn’t help that the Texas election code itself is frankly rather vague. It does say you have to vote where your residency is; the official word is “one’s home and fixed place of habitation to which one intends to return after any temporary absence.” And there’s a few more bullet points after that in law.
But even with that, it’s not entirely clear in a lot of these cases whether this person’s vote should be counted and this person’s shouldn’t. So that’s up to the courts to decide.
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Well, I could see this being an issue for a lot of Texans, no matter where you live. Maybe you’ve got a home where you spent part of your time and another home where you intend to spend more time in the future. And where do you vote?
Does the county’s size, though – Loving County being so sparsely populated – lend itself to these kinds of disputes more than elsewhere in Texas?
The county size definitely in two ways, not only where you’re talking the the small population you mentioned. The margins can be so small in these elections that it’s fairly easy for the candidate who comes up short to bring up some sort of dispute.
But even with this small population, the county has a very large land area, about 670 square miles – and it has a really outsized influence because you do have some farms there, but the big thing is the oil and gas beneath there. You have reserves there worth several billion dollars by some estimates. And whoever wins these elections gets a lot of sway on how those resources and how that money is distributed.
Interesting. So what happens now? Will there be a new election?
That’s up to the district court to decide. I haven’t heard anything about that yet. This latest decision is so new; it just came down on Friday. Given how close we are to November, it’s entirely possible that it’ll just be part of the ballot in November.
But there’s also the possibility the case gets appealed again up to the Texas Supreme Court. And if that happens, it’s stuck in limbo for who knows how long.
