Election law in Texas is “very demanding” and “stressful because of the accelerated nature of the calendar,” says Elizabeth D. Alvarez. Elizabeth is head of civil litigation/election litigation at Guest & Gray and a 12-year election litigation practitioner who has represented state parties, national parties, and candidates on both sides of the aisle. She tells hosts Todd Smith and Jody Sanders that roughly 90% of Texas election litigation flows from the statutory writ of mandamus and injunction under Chapter 273 of the Election Code, and that fewer than 30 lawyers in the state have litigated a writ more than three times. She also tackles election integrity, calling voting machines "safer than paper." Tune in for her war story about winning an election contest that was so strange she felt like she was living in a John Grisham novel.

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Welcome to the Texas

Appellate Law Podcast,

the show that takes you inside the

Texas and federal appellate systems.

Through conversations with judges, court

staff, top trial and appellate lawyers,

academics, and innovators,

we provide practical insights to help

you become a more effective advocate.

Whether you're handling

appeals or preparing for trial,

you'll discover strategies to sharpen

your arguments, innovate your practice,

and stay ahead of the latest developments.

And now, here are your hosts,

Todd Smith and Jody Sanders.

Produced and powered by LawPods.

Welcome back to the Texas Appellate

Law Podcast. I'm Jody Sanders.

And I'm Todd Smith.

And our guest today is Elizabeth Alvarez,

who's at Guest and Gray. Elizabeth,

thanks for joining us today.

I'm glad to be here, guys.

So Elizabeth, tell us a

little bit about yourself,

what you do and how you got into that.

I am the head of civil litigation,

election at Guest & Gray.

I went to law school in

California at Pepperdine,

and then I worked for a nonprofit

for a little while in Dallas,

but most of my career has been

civil litigation of some kind,

but I've been doing election

litigation for 12 years.

Todd and I have both voted in elections,

and that is about the extent that

we have knowledge of election law.

So we're glad to have you

on here to talk about that.

How did you get into election

law? That's an interesting niche.

I used to be a long time

ago. In a previous life,

I was the vice chair of the

Dallas County Republican Party,

but that was a long time ago,

and it was a lot different then.

And it was larger. I didn't

really understand why we

could never find a lawyer.

I was like, why can't we find a

lawyer? There aren't any. There's two.

And then I figured out we should

probably get one of those.

And then I thought I could do that.

It was an unpleasant learning curve,

but since that time,

I've become one of the main litigators

of election litigation in this state,

and there really aren't that

many. As the practice develops,

I've represented state parties,

national parties, candidates,

judges on both sides of the aisle. I

think it's very interesting type of law,

but it's very demanding and it can be

stressful because of the accelerated

nature of the calendar. I've also

served as the House Election Committee

attorney for a few sessions as well.

So I've had a lot of involvement in

drafting some of the amended parts of the

election code and an attempt to make it

more practicable for attorneys to use.

It was not really terribly thought

out the first time around, I think.

We have a unique system in Texas.

A lot of states have an automatic

enforcement mechanism for election code.

And that includes campaign violations to

voter suppression, turning voters away.

I mean, any kind of election related

incident like our neighbor, for example,

Georgia has a whole administrative

division and they have a court that is

assigned attorneys the same

way that administrative court,

a federal administrative agency,

they have their own courts.

They assign lawyers and

other states do that.

Several of our neighboring states do that.

So it goes straight there. Other states

have the attorney general as a main

responsible person with original

jurisdiction over election litigation.

And while that used to

be the case in Texas,

the problem is that most or the

majority of the immediate relief

that you would need from a court in

an election matter has to go through a

private attorney.

We just don't have a system or regulatory

scheme in Texas to assist you with

virtually anything.

If you are turned away at a polling place

or you're registered to vote and they

won't let you vote or they wrongfully

reject your provisional ballot,

maybe your opponent didn't really get

all the petition signatures they need to

get on the ballot.

You can file a complaint with your local

DA's office or you can file a complaint

with the Secretary of State,

but they're not going to

fix it and they're not going

to do whatever you need to

get immediate relief. The legislature

has seen fit to put that in the hands of

private practitioners.

So most people don't realize that

they're directed on most occasions, "Oh,

this happened to you. Fill out this form,

file it with the

Secretary of State." Well,

you're not going to hear back from the

Secretary of State until six months after

the election. They'll send you a letter

that says, "We've read your complaint.

We've decided that yes,

this person did violate the law

or this practice violated the law,

so we are now going to launch an

investigation into this issue." But the

election's over.

So you didn't get to vote or your

opponent got to stand for the office,

even though they shouldn't have

been, or whatever the issue is,

those ballots were counted

and they shouldn't have

been or someone's ballot was

wrongfully rejected by the ballot board,

that's over and there's no fixing it.

There's not really any mechanism for state

intervention to correct those issues

because we largely run elections on a

volunteer basis, which is

also a unique practice.

Most states don't do it that way.

Our primaries are run by

your local county chair.

Most of them contract every

single one except for one county,

which recently decided

they didn't want to,

but they contract with the county

elections department to run the election,

but they are the authority

administering the election.

So your local precinct chairs

are electing a chair. Well,

you elect a chair on the general election

ballot or the primary ballot rather,

but if that vacancy, if they resign

or can no longer fill that spot,

the precinct chairs can elect

a replacement. But either way,

the number of people who are choosing

the party chair is pretty small.

It's whoever's voting in your county on

that primary ballot. That individual is

now in charge. The Secretary of State,

all the money that they use to process

elections and administer them are going

to go in a Secretary of State account.

It's an elections administration account

that the county chair is now the boss

of.

So we have people who have

no administrative experience

whatsoever of any kind.

Maybe they're the boss, maybe

they're a lawyer, maybe they're not.

Maybe they're the county chair of a

medium-sized county and two weeks ago,

they were managing staples, but now

they're in charge of your right to vote.

And they get access to that money.

They now have to engage in this long,

complicated process to choose

your judges, choose your clerks.

They choose where you vote.

They have to make sure that those

locations all get contracted with.

They have to make sure

they're paying a fair price.

Every place you vote is rented. The

government's paying for that through the

party chair who is going through and

contracting with all of these different

locations to run the

election for your primary.

They're also paying the

judges and the clerks. Now,

the money may get processed through the

county, but they're the ones paying.

And that money comes from SOS and they

have to account for every single dollar.

So we are running elections on this

sort of lower decentralized level

because Texas has always kind of been

that way because it started out so large.

We always just kept thinking

we can do it this reason.

We have such high

jurisdiction in JP courts.

We're addicted to that romantic idea

that regular people can handle it.

It'll be fine. So you end up

where the legislature said, "Well,

we don't really want to establish a

whole agency to police this stuff,

so why don't we just make law that you

can get an attorney and they can fix it

for you? " So chapter 273 of

the election code has a writ of

mandamus that's statutory and

an injunction that's statutory.

And I'd say roughly 90% of elections

litigation comes from those two

provisions. There's a tendent

one and 161 of the code,

and that's for party chairs

or other party officers.

And then you have the section

for election contests,

but that's not a very

common usage of the code.

And 90% of the code's use in a court

setting is the writ of mandamus

and the injunction.

And they have little bit different

standards than your common law one,

but that's how most people, if

any, relief is possible for them,

that's where they're going to get it.

So why is it that contests are not as

common as mandamus or injunction under the

code?

So contests are really complicated and

the trial schedule for those is really

advanced. An election contest,

maybe everybody doesn't know,

but it's the way you

challenge an election result.

The courts and the code divvy up the

kind of relief you can get based on what

you're trying to challenge and what

period in the election schedule we're in.

If you're challenging a candidate's

eligibility, they don't reside here,

something of that nature,

you have to file it before the

ballots go out for the primary.

You may litigate it afterwards,

but it has to be filed before

those mail-in ballots go out.

If you're challenging whether or not

your opponent got enough signatures,

if you're challenging a ballot

board action, election judge action,

a county action, all those actions

are going to be writs or injunctions.

An election contest is solely to challenge

the results of an election by arguing

that ballots were counted

that should not have been,

or ballots were not counted

that should have been,

or a person in charge of the election

prevented somebody from voting,

broke the law or made a mistake such that

the true result of the election cannot

be ascertained. That's the only thing

you can argue when you're talking about

election contests. It's a

really, really steep hurdle.

And the amount of time you get to litigate

them is incredibly small if it's for

a primary. So any contest going

on right now, for instance,

I think it's 232.008 talks about contests

for a primary or where there's going

to be a runoff. Those are even more

expedited than regular contests. In

232012 talks about the deadlines for that.

So when you file a petition

for an election contest,

it has to be filed within

15 days of the canvas.

If you have a recount after

the election is canvassed,

a canvas is when they finalize

the election. So when you vote,

you vote on election day

or early voting or by mail,

you're just trusting your

ballots are getting counted.

There's a whole bunch of things that are

happening in the background. You've got

a ballot board and a

signature verification

committee that are working for

weeks,

process mail-in ballots and get

all those situated and organized.

And then the tabulation for

early voting cast in person,

none of those votes can be tabulated

until the polls close for early voting.

So once that's all done, now you have

election day. After election day,

you still have to wait seven days

because people who vote provisionally,

they have seven days to come in and prove

that their ballot should be counted.

So after that day,

you have a total of 11 days from the

day of the election to get it canvassed.

That's when the authority,

whoever's in charge, says,

"These are the official results.

We accept these results and we're

signing off on it. " Once that's done,

that's considered to be the public

hosting of the results or the publicly

available results.

From that day,

if you want to challenge the results and

you can file for a recount or you can

file a contest. A recount is not

like the recounts in Bush F. Gore.

We don't get to examine hanging chads in

Texas or recount is just the votes that

have been counted.

A lot of times people will file a recount

because they're convinced that there's

secret mail-in ballots that they didn't

get to get counted or that maybe the

machine is tricking them so

they want to do it again.

It's almost impossible for the

machines to be ... It's really, really,

really difficult to have a machine issue.

The only kind of mistakes that machines

make really are under votes and

overvotes.

And an overvote is when you vote for

more than one person in the same race and

undervotes when you skip

it. Every once in a while,

you'll have a voter who maybe they're

so enthusiastic that they love James

Talerico that they circle his name

instead of filling in the bubble. The

computer, the Scantron, it's a

glorified ScanTron machine, right?

So when it reads it,

your circle crossed into the field

for Talerico and for Jasmine Crockett.

So it thinks you voted twice

so it doesn't count it.

And sometimes people are really in a

hurry and we tell people when you vote,

fill in your bubble, make

sure your bubble's darkened.

If you're just bubbling it a little bit,

maybe the machine doesn't pick it up.

So it thinks you undervoted. In a recount,

we pull out every single ballot that was

counted and we hand count them again in

teams of four. Every once in a while,

you'll find a ballot in the box.

It'll say there are five

undervotes in the box,

but it turns out that

most of those ballots,

you can clear voter intent to

vote for a particular individual.

The machine didn't pick it up.

So you can change those votes or maybe the

machine thought you voted

twice, so nothing counts,

but it's clear the voter's intent

was to circle Talerico's name.

So when we re-tally that,

we're going to switch that vote that

when we do the new tally at the end,

it's going to have an extra vote for

Talerico because recount judge determined

that that's what that ballot really

meant. Any ballots that were rejected,

mail-in ballots that didn't count,

that's not part of the deal.

Those never get brought out.

Only the ones that count get brought

out and you count them again.

So you really aren't going

to see much of a change.

People do that if they're

super close, really close.

The statute allows you to do it if you're

within a certain percentage or if you

want to challenge the machine results,

but really it's not advisable to

spend the money because they're really

expensive because you're paying for the

staff. When you do a deposit ahead of

time and they tell you how much it's

going to cost and it can cost ...

When I do recount, I've had to

do several recounts, for example,

for Representative Morgan Meyer when the

race is really close in the general and

his opponent filed a recount,

those things cost 50, 60 grand.

You have to pay it for all the staff.

They're counting them in tables and

depending on how many tables you're paying

for four staff members per table

to hand count ballots for days.

And before they do that, because

we have countywide voting,

they have to go through all the boxes

and pull out every ballot that was voted

in that House race and then put the

others back and then triple count to make

sure we physically have every fiscal

ballot that matches the number of total

votes count.

And that takes days ahead of time.

I was curious, Liz,

you talked about bubbling

in the Scantrons.

Are there any Scantron type ballots

still being used in in- person

voting anymore or is

it all machine voting?

And so I guess the corollary to that is

the hanging chat issue or the virtual

hanging chat issue,

is that only for mail-ins really

these days as a practical matter?

Yeah. In terms of the type of ballots

you use, when election bills change,

like when SB-1 changed the

type of machines you can use,

they usually give counties a significant

amount of time to buy that equipment

and change it because each of

those machines is super pricey.

So some of the smaller counties may

have gotten extensions and they're

stretching out the time they're

allotted to switch machines.

But almost every machine in the state

has reached the point where you're

inputting your votes on one machine and

it prints out your Scantron and then

you're running the Scantron

through the other machine.

But we're still in a time period

where within the past decade,

multiple large counties were still

using the hand-filled-in scantrons,

especially on election day.

But now that we're moving to a countywide

voting system for election day,

it's just too much trouble to

facilitate having that many different

ballot styles physically available when

you can order the scantrons with the

serial numbers that can be printed by

the computer based on whatever we're

coding your precinct to be when you vote.

It's just an easier way for people to

handle it. So it's not really

a very common situation.

Most of the time when you're looking

to challenging votes in a contest,

you're looking at people who were

assisted, who shouldn't have been.

Sometimes you have issues where

people will trick the elderly.

I'm not saying it's very

common, but it does happen.

I've litigated several

cases. We're not talking.

There's no thousands of people stuffing

ballot boxes. That's not a thing.

There are people in the state,

there are cases of individuals who

what they like to do is they will,

most of the time they target the elderly.

They like to steal the mail-in

ballots from the mailboxes,

they fill them all out together or

they can convince the person to sign

something and they think it's a

petition or whatever to fill a pothole,

but it's an application for a ballot

by mail. And you'll figure it out when

they're all mailed.

Maybe there's a neighborhood over here

and all these mail-in ballots have a

stamp on them from a post office an

hour and a half away and none of those

people can drive and we'll

subpoena them, we'll talk to them.

And the last person they voted for

was Kennedy and they don't know.

They're not even sure they're

registered. And I mean,

that's a real thing that does occur.

But I think in a post-Trump era,

people are inclined to be concerned

that that's never happened. To be clear,

the things he said happened have, in

fact, never happened, did not happen.

He made it up. And people are getting

disbarred for that and rightfully so.

But there are legitimate

cases of ballot issues,

but most of the ones I've seen are

people who shouldn't have been allowed to

vote, but they did,

or people who shouldn't have

been assisted with their ballot,

but they were.

There's instances like that.

A lot of cases in South Texas have those

kinds of vibes where they have what's

called politics and they sort of collect

people and then drive them all to the

polls at the same time and have

somebody go in with these individuals.

And then when they leave, they'll

pay them money. But like I said,

it's not a common practice.

So I don't want people to get the idea

that that's a thing that's happening

every time you vote

because that's not true.

I think you mentioned this

in connection with primaries,

but maybe it applies more broadly.

We were talking offline before we started

recording about the limited experience

that Jody and I have in this area of the

law, which is one of the reasons why.

We're super happy to have you with

us today. I recall from, I think,

the one instance that I had an

election, I believe it was a contest.

One thing people forget about besides the

just, or they don't know about at all,

besides just the accelerated timelines

is that one reason why they're so

accelerated and the deadlines are such

is that once those ballots go out,

once the ballots are printed, there's

very little that could be done.

If the mail-in ballots, I remember,

I think is kind of what drove that.

Is that accurate or what's the connection?

We have something called

the Ferguson rule.

And so the Constitution

gives the legislature the

authority and right to set the

time, place, and manner of elections,

which means they set the calendar,

they set the schedule.

As part of the schedule,

mail-in ballots and ballots to people

overseas have to go out 45 days before

voting begins.

The Supreme Court is held that although

courts have broad equitable authority in

Texas to issue any kind of relief

they see fit to ensure access to the

ballot, access to voting, et cetera,

that authority ends if it would

interfere with the election schedule.

That's different for something

like a Voting Rights Act case.

When you're talking about that, you're

talking about constitutional rights,

but there's no such thing as a

right to be a candidate on a ballot.

Supreme Court's been very

clear that that's not a right.

And as long as we're not

talking about rights,

you can't change the schedule.

The judiciary doesn't have

that authority because

they view it as a violation

of separation of powers.

Once they've changed the

schedule of the election,

though you're supering the legislature's

authority to set that time, place,

and manner. Therefore, they call it the

Ferguson rule because the case started,

the quotes they like to use is since

the days of Ma and Paul, Ferguson, blah,

blah, blah.

But basically what happens is if you

can't finish in time for all your

appellate deadlines to have been run

before that ballot goes out on the 45th

day, it doesn't matter if you

filed on time, you're done.

So in practical terms,

we have to start accelerating election

procedures because that time space is

really limited. If you think

about a municipal election,

there are people who turn

in their applications to

run for school board or city

council and the elections in four weeks.

So if the election's in four

weeks, maybe they don't have early

voting sometimes, but either way,

there's a date by certain by

which the ballots have to go out.

You have to be done before

that day, completely finished.

So the election code has

provisions written in that

allow you to file your writ

directly with the Supreme Court.

They have original jurisdiction

over chapter 273 election writs.

You may also choose to go to your

local district appellate court,

but you don't have to. It's your decision.

It's one your attorney has to make

based on the different demands of your

situation.

And your injunctions have to be filed

in a district court in the county where

the candidate resides.

If it is an office that is wholly

contained within one county,

then you have to file

in that district court.

But if you're a congressional office,

there are other places you can file.

If you go to more counties,

there's jurisdictional specifications in

the election code for where you can put

these, but your injunction

has the same sort of binds.

So there are oftentimes when you could

choose to file either an election or a

writ,

and there are several factors that'll

help you decide because appellate courts

can't resolve fact issues and that

doesn't change when you're talking about

election writs. So if you have a factual

dispute, you might need an injunction,

which means that you need to think very

seriously of how much time you have

before you run out, right?

Because if I file an injunction,

I might skip a TRO entirely and file

a notice for an emergency injunction

hearing, set my hearing in

three days, have my hearing,

have my witnesses collect facts,

I get denied or I get granted,

and then it provides for an immediate

appeal to either the Supreme Court or

your local appellate district court.

The loser gets to decide whether ...

If you are in the middle of an appeal

and you start approaching the deadline,

then they'll just dismiss your cases

moot because you have to be out the door.

You have to remember, not every

county prints its own ballots.

Most counties still order those ballots

out from a few vendors which are

approved by the state. So if your

ballots have to go out September 3rd,

that means you have to have your order

into your vendor by a certain day.

And maybe they can print corrections

for one ballot for one race,

but the larger the race,

the harder that gets.

If you're talking about county judge,

they have to reprint every ballot, right?

You have to find out.

And a lot of times elections

administrators will say

they can't possibly.

And judges will say, "I don't think

that's true. I think you don't want to.

" Obviously, I've never seen a

judge say, "You are lying to me.

" But I've seen judges say,

"I find it difficult to believe that

that's an impossibility and drag in a

vendor to find out actually how long it

would take." But at some point before

the day the ballots go out,

you have to have a cutoff.

So once you get close to that period,

they'll start saying, "Okay, well,

the ballots are going to go out. "

If you're in the middle of an appeal,

you didn't ask and you didn't notice the

court that it's an election matter and

you didn't get an expedited briefing

schedule and you're in the middle of a

briefing calendar with, say,

the Fourth District and the ballots

have to go out in three weeks,

you're probably toast if your opponent

files a motion because they're going to

say, "Even if I finish my

brief and they do their reply,

then you're going to decide." The loser

still has to have time to go through an

entire appeal to the Supreme Court and

a briefing schedule and a denial or an

order or argument or whatever. And we

don't have any more time left for them to

...

And they need at least a week to get

ballots reprinted for a race this size for

a city or county this size and the

ballots go out in three of those weeks.

So we have two weeks to be done and

they'll never be finished, at which point.

Sometimes some courts will say, "Well,

we're going to keep going until we get

within a couple of days and then I'm just

going to kick it if we can't be

finished." Other courts will say,

"I think this is a waste of my

time because even if I rule,

whatever I say is going to get

reversed and remanded because

we're out of time." So nobody wants

to spend all their time hearing oral

arguments at 8:00 PM,

you know what I mean?

And reading briefs that you gave

an attorney 12 hours to write,

just to have the Supreme Court say,

"Why did you do that? It's moot.

Nobody wants to do.

That.

" That seems to be of the Supreme Court

mandamus opinions and elections that I

see. Those are the ones that

you see a lot is, "Well,

you should have told this sooner

because we're not going to help you. ".

It gets really difficult though,

and we obviously are all respectful

of the court and they do a great job,

I think. But every once in a while,

you run into the problem that they have

not been in private practice for an

awfully long time. For instance, in

election contest, I have one right now.

The election code says that when I file

my petition that I have to notice the

district clerk,

that they have to forward

it to the authority and that

the district clerk has an

obligation. They shall, it's mandamusable.

They shall alert the district judge

in the court that it is assigned to,

that it is an election contest.

Then another provision

triggers an automatic recusal

that judge is required to

recuse himself. No judge

in that district may stand.

And then the chief administrative judge

must assign me a judge from out of

district and that until I get a judge,

the chief administrative judge can sign

any order as is necessary. But it also

says that from the date of

service of the petition,

the contestee, which is the defendant,

they have five days to answer,

not 10, not 21, they have

five. That answer is due at

And after they file their response,

the trial must be set for a date,

not later than five days from the

date the answer was due or the day the

answer was filed, whichever

is later. So as a side note,

and I was listening to your previous

podcast with Judge Meacham and I was like,

"If you want to talk about clerks being

mad about the summary judgment," they

lose it. When you tell them this,

they're like, "You got to be kidding me.

" I am not kidding, ma'am. And

sirs. Ladies and gentlemen,

I just work here the same as you,

but they get real mad about that.

What happens is there's a series of things

that have to happen for this

to happen on time, right?

So they've got to tell the

judge and their coordinator,

depending on whether they

have a centralized docket

or a non-centralized docket,

you're getting this new case. It's an

election contest. You need to sign,

you need to recuse yourself

today, this afternoon.

We got to forward this stuff

to the chief admin judge.

We need a new judge immediately.

Because from the date of the answer,

you get five days to hold

talk about the one continuance you're

allowed is for 10 days and that's it.

Not 10 days or more, not

multiple one 10-day continuance,

either for cause with the affidavit and

support or by agreement of the parties.

What happens if you file it? There

are contests where you'll file it.

Maybe it's ahead of a runoff

and the district clerk will ...

I've seen this happen.

Someone will file a contest,

especially in a smaller school

board, that kind of thing.

Somebody will file a contest and the

district clerk will fail to forward it to

whatever authorities

administering the election.

And since they've not forwarded it,

that person just goes, "Okay, well,

we're going to have a runoff." And

they just start holding the runoff.

And if they hold the runoff

without you, you know what I mean,

you've been mooted.

And so you'll go to the Supreme Court

and say they can't have a runoff because

the runoff is barred by

statute. And they'll say,

"That's true, but they did it.

" You can't do the results twice, right?

You challenged this raise.

We're going to hold a runoff.

The winner has been determined.

"You've challenged this one.

You can't challenge it. We're done.

Sorry. "So now as part of practice,

everyone forwards it

themselves to the party chair,

whoever's administering the election,

the school board, the water district,

whatever. Then what happens

if they do the citation wrong?

The election code says that the citation

must read that you have five days to

respond and that it must be returned

within 20 days if it can't be served.

What happens if the clerk prints it wrong

and you call the clerk and you say,"

Hey, I might get bounced because you

didn't print the citation correctly.

I need you to change the citation to

reflect this section of the election code.

"What should you do if they say,"

Well, I don't want to do that.

"Which they always take well, definitely.

Right? Unfortunately, that's the answer.

And that's what I mean when

I say what's really funny,

although I love the Supreme Court and

they're very nice people and they're

really good at their job.

Sometimes I find that they are not

as acquainted with how life possibly

works for practitioners

because when that happens,

their answer is always," Well, you

should have mandamus that person. "Okay,

I live here. I work here.

The answer is not that there should be

a provision where my client gets relief

or gets extra days because they didn't

do what they were supposed to do.

The answer is if you didn't mandamus the

district clerk who will forever reject

your filings until you

pass away after that date,

then it's your fault. So that's a

problem. Then you've got another problem.

What happens if they do the citation

correctly or they don't serve it? Or what

if you pay them to serve it

and they don't? Or what if,

I just had this happen in a recent case.

We filed a contest and we called the

coordinator for the judge where we were

assigned because we waited an entire

four days and still didn't get even an

order of recusal. Staff contacted them,

opposing counsel tried contacting them,

nothing, no response. We called

the clerk, the district clerk,

and Texas is really large.

So I couldn't drive nine hours that day

to go physically to the office and say,"

Hey, I need help.

"And then eventually we got a reply and

the reply was just a standard printed

cattle call hearing set for

like four months from now.

This is not going to work out. We contact

them and we say," We need a new judge.

"And the trial starts in three days. And

if we don't have a trial by that day,

we only get one in continuance for 10

days. We really need somebody to be

capable of signing that continuance.

The statute does say I can get the

chief administrative judge to do that.

But as a practical matter,

that doesn't show up on his digital

things he has authority over because the

county or the district never forwarded it.

If that judge has never signed a

recusal and they're just doing whatever,

and I contact the chief

administrative judge and say," Hey,

I filed this contest. I

don't have a new judge yet.

I need you to sign this order. He'll say,

"What do you mean?" "What do you

mean you don't have a judge? ""Well,

get back to me. " You need to

go through the proper channels.

You need to contact that judge. You

need to have him sign the thing.

And then once he's recused himself,

then I'll sign orders. And then again,

you're put in the unfortunate

position of saying, "Hi,

I live here and you are the chief

administrative judge of the region that I

would like to practice law in, but

also you're wrong. And I really,

really need to force you. "

Yeah, they take it super well.

I really need to force you to do

this thing that you don't want to do.

And they're always like, "But I

don't want to. " Then what do you do?

The Supreme Court has said again that

the remedy for that is that I should

mandamus the chief administrative judge.

And I think I understand why you might

say that, but as a practical matter,

that can't really be my only option.

So we will do absolutely anything

to avoid having to do that, right?

That's not a comfortable

position to be in.

And the other issue is that there's no

real discovery because discovery in Texas

is triggered by disclosures

and disclosures are due

30 days after your answer.

We'll be done by then. You'll have

lost plenary authority by then.

So there is no discovery. The only

discovery that we have is what's called a

motion for inspection and

impoundment of election records.

So after you get a judge,

you set a date for the

elections administrator to

produce the originals of every

single thing you want.

It's the only time that those

ballots can leave the vault,

not in the custody of an LEO.

Other than the AG or the DA impounding

those ballots or DPS or somebody,

that's the only time anybody

who's not them can take them away.

So you get this order and you set a date

and time for you to go and sometimes

opposing counsel comes, some

say they don't want to come.

Sometimes the judge says,

"I've never done this before and I want

to touch the ballots." And sometimes

they go, "I don't want to be

there." Just depends on your judge.

But what happens is they're going to

produce all this stuff and you're going to

be locked in a room for a whole day,

sometimes two days to physically go

through every single thing. And And then

you're going to tell the elections

whichever custodian of records they send,

"I want these.

These are records I need." You pay them

to copy them that day and you can also

scan them with your phone.

They give you your copies and then the

judge is going to sign an impoundment

order for every single thing I want to

use in my trial and they're going to lock

them up.

And with the court where they lock up

exhibits and then everything else goes

back. That's it. That's the

whole thing. That's discovery.

We try really hard to be nice to our

fellow members of the bar and we all try

really hard to exchange witness lists

as soon as we have some or do something.

But just with the crunch time schedule,

there just simply isn't time to

even do that kind of paperwork.

So you run into a problem when you don't

have a judge on time. What happens if

you don't have a judge, your

opponents filed an answer.

Your trial's now in four days.

Because you don't have a judge and the

administrative judge hasn't gotten around

to it yet,

you haven't even set your day to

inspect the files and you don't have a

continuance, you're in trouble.

The deadlines are a little bit longer

for elections that aren't primaries,

but for the most part, that's

all you get. You file a contest,

you will be out of there in 20 days

or less. Some of them are longer.

Challenges for general

elections can take months,

but none of them is ever going to go on

longer than eight months because you're

going to hit. What if you win? If you

win, you have to have a new election.

And that election has to be noticed and

that one has to have early voting. And

that one has to have the seven period

day after it to accept provisionals.

And then you got to canvas it.

There's a built-in period of time of at

least six to eight weeks where if you

win, this is what has to happen.

You have to build that in.

So if you're litigating one now,

even if that deadline didn't exist,

the Ferguson rule would prohibit

you from waiting much longer.

The ballots go out September 3rd,

and most counties need that

information mid-August, late August.

How are you going to finish if you need

six weeks to have an election and canvas

it and wait for provisionals, et

cetera? You get three weeks max.

It's kind of crazy for people,

especially if they don't do a

lot of trial work and they go,

"This can't be that hard." And

they sign up for it. And it's like,

not only are you getting a trial,

but you're getting a trial where you're

subpoenaing 20 witnesses. You have no

idea what they're going to say.

You've done no depositions.

You don't know who's coming.

You don't know who's not coming.

You subpoena a bunch of records. You

have no idea what's going to happen.

There's no disclosures. There's

no admissions. You've got nothing.

So you're just like, "Hi, I'm here

for trial. I bought a bunch of stuff,

not sure what's going to happen.

I hope everyone's comfortable." It's very

stressful, but entertaining, I think.

Most of them are really interesting.

It is. It's like the wild, wild west.

To be honest, it's crazy.

I've had other lawyers,

I try to teach as many associates as I

can how to do election law because it's

such a niche area. I think if more

people can do it, I'm not really into,

I want to be the only

person who can do this.

I don't think that's responsible.

What if I get hit by a bus?

What are you going to do? I think

that more people should learn it,

but every time I take

someone for the first time,

they are severely overwhelmed

because they're like,

"I don't even know what we're doing here.

I don't know what this piece of paper

is for. I don't know who this is.

I don't know who to call.

I don't know what to do.

" And I'm pretty sure every judge

that's ever had me is really tired of me

saying, "I know you don't want

to do this, but you have to.

" The poor judge I have right now, he

wants to go on vacation. And I'm like,

"I am not. I'm so sorry.

I can't continue it.

You have to try this case in the next

10 days." And that is unfortunate for

everyone. And then I feel bad, badly,

but it can't be helped.

When I was working for the legislature,

we explored changing the deadlines,

which we looked at various

different ways we could do it.

And the best we could do was to add

five days to the non-primary contest

because every time we did the math,

we ended up with people are going to file

these contests if we have an extended

timeline.

They're going to think that that's the

only thing which controls when they

should do stuff. So they're

going to do it, file it, try it,

spend so much money, and then have a

judge be like, "That's super interesting.

It's moot. Then they're going to

be mad. So we just better not.

" About how many lawyers, if you have any

idea off the top of your head, I mean,

this is such a specialized

area as you point out.

I really know anybody else who

focuses on it the way that you do.

And you would think there would be here

in Austin because this is kind of a

hotbed for that sort of thing.

But what is your sense about how many

lawyers do practice in this area because

it's just filled with landmines?

There are a handful,

but it also depends on what kind

of law you're talking about.

If you want to talk about campaign law,

you can throw a rock and hit one in

Austin just like you can with a lobbyist

everywhere. Then you've got a whole

subsection. I do campaign law,

Voter Rights Act, redistricting

and election litigation,

this kind of election

litigation, but most don't.

There are lawyers who do a lot of

civil rights law and also specialize

specifically in Voter Rights Act

law like Tex Casada and Chad Dunn.

They're very good at

their jobs, Eric Opiela.

But in terms of people who litigate

writs of mandamus and injunctions

and election contests, if I had

to count, as soon as possible,

there are ones that I don't know about,

there aren't that many

election contests every cycle.

I get hired to do it all over the state

because there aren't that many. And I

teach CLEs on the subject.

And if you look at the stats from

the people in the election committee,

they're to my best guess, because

I tried to count this once before.

There are like 27 lawyers that

I personally think are qualified

to litigate a writ. I mean,

eventually someone else has to learn,

but if you're asking me how many people

have done it more than say three times,

it's like less than 30. And it is crazy.

I should know the answer

to this question then.

Is there a board

certification in election law?

There just happened to become one in

COVID during the COVID period of time,

came up with a test. We've

just started administering it.

People are just taking the test. So

there is one. I haven't taken it.

I don't think ...

A lot of the lawyers that I work with

haven't gotten around to taking it.

I know a lot of campaign

lawyers are taking it,

but they try to make sure

the test is equally balanced.

But it's hard to do that when you

know it's not going to be that common.

I'm not sure if that makes sense.

It's sort of like those guys.

When you find a tort

lawyer whose whole career,

they just sued tobacco until they retired.

There are a lot of other

people that do tort cases,

but maybe not a lot of people that

do that. In terms of election law,

we want to make sure that people are

getting CLE classes in all of the types.

But the reality is,

unless you are really well known or

you're practicing it often and a lot,

you can't sustain a practice on

just litigating election contests.

And there's lawyers in Dallas

like David Ray, for example,

he's a really good attorney. He's

represented parties, he does contests,

he does writs, he does

other types of lawsuits.

There really are not a lot of lawyers

who do that regularly such that

it would make sense to focus a

whole test on this side because the

opportunity for you to

use that is limited,

especially if you don't live

near a metropolitan area.

If you're living in Dallas, Houston,

Austin, maybe the Valley, San Antonio,

you might get an opportunity

because elections happen so often.

I have to go to court year

round for these kinds of things.

Everything from party chairs to they

won't release the money to pay my judge or

whatever.

That kind of work is,

there's not so much of it that a person

could expect to do that often and

a lot unless they're willing to commit

to the idea that you'd have practice it

over several years to get

I think election cycle, for example, I

had to do like 31 writs. It was insane.

We tried at some point to find

somebody else to take these cases.

I feel a sort of sense

of obligation sometimes,

especially if it's about voter

access, they won't count my ballot,

they won't let me vote or whatever.

I would feel poorly about turning

that person away if I know they can't

find another lawyer because if

that's our most fundamental right,

I would really like to

see people recognize the

opportunity to offer that as a

type of service you can do. A lot of

people also think it's very partisan. "Oh,

I don't want to volunteer to help a

party because I'm not that partisan.

"But they don't realize that you're

volunteering to help ensure that they are

running an election where

everyone gets to vote,

where the judges are getting trained,

where the locations aren't

getting moved or shut down.

All those types of things you think

about from a civil rights perspective are

largely reliant on having an in-

house counsel attached to the local

party that can help make

sure that that happens.

If nobody's there to help go to these

meetings with the county and the opposite

party chair to work with them,

if no one's negotiating the contracts

and staying on top of all of those things

in compliance with those contracts you

might have with the community college

district or the libraries for this

elementary school or whatever,

you might end up in a position where

they cancel the contract and now you have

to relocate a voting location for

thousands and thousands and thousands of

people. Studies have proven that that's

detrimental to voter turnout and that

when you move somebody's location,

more than 40% of those people

will not return, will not vote,

even if you give them the name

and address of the next location.

So there's a reason why you

can't just change locations.

The law protects citizens against that.

You can't arbitrarily

change someone's location,

but sometimes it can't be helped if it's

no longer feasible to place it there.

And so I think a lot of people would find

fulfillment and making sure that their

local elections are run in a way that

complies with the law and reduces the

amount of friction between citizens

exercising their voting right.

You kind of mentioned it earlier,

but the idea of sort of election integrity

and that's become a big hot topic.

I mean,

what do people misunderstand about that

that ends up getting so much argument

about it?

I think it's a really touchy subject and

I'm sometimes hesitant to talk about it

because I'm always afraid

that people are going to have,

they're going to walk away

with a particular opinion

about what kind of a person

I may or may not be.

I think the idea that all elections are

stolen and everything's fraudulent and

that there are ports of non-citizens

voting in our elections is hogwash.

That's not a real thing that happens.

There are people who are voting.

It is rare, but there are people who

are voting who should not be voting.

And every once in a while,

there are people who will

commit any crime that exists.

But most of the time when you run into a

person who's voting when they shouldn't

be, they didn't know they

weren't supposed to vote.

The law doesn't make allowances for that.

They'll go and they will. If you go to

vote and somebody tells you you're not

registered, you have a choice.

You can either walk away or you

can vote a provisional ballot.

And if it's a precinct issue, like

you're registered to vote here,

you're registered to vote, but you

need to go vote in this other precinct.

A lot of people ill say," Well, I already

waited in line here. I'm not leaving.

"So after the Bush v. Gore situation,

that's the thing I get really ...

Everybody has a little soapbox. I get

really mad about Bush versus Gore.

Bush did not steal an election. I

don't think it was an unfair ...

What happened in that

situation is people voted.

We have a largely common rule in the

country that you got to vote in your

precinct, right? Until Bush v.

Gore, that was largely the rule.

What happened is you had people who

went to vote in their precincts and were

told," You are not registered here or

you're not registered at all. "And until

then,

we didn't really have a provisional

balloting system that would allow you to

vote in a sort of limbo situation where

we could decide later if it's going to

count. That's what

provisional ballots are.

You show up and say," I'm

registered and I want to vote here.

"You now have a right to vote a ballot.

Whether your ballot's going to count

or not is a completely separate issue.

But before then, we would say," I'm

sorry, you're not registered. Sorry,

have an I say.

"But what happens if you find out later

that that person really was registered

and it was a mistake?

Or what happens if they

voted in the precinct and if

they had voted a mile and a

half down the road, that ballot

would've counted in the same county,

but it didn't count because they

voted at the wrong precinct.

Is it fair to make people only vote

in one precinct? And the Supreme Court

essentially said those are the

rules. The legislature set them.

We don't have the

authority to change them.

But we really think you guys should

think more seriously about providing an

avenue to catch more of these votes so

that as many votes as possible can count.

That's what happened in Bush v. Gore.

If you get rid of the politics and you

sort of really read what is happening is

Gore was proposing that people's

votes should still count.

The Supreme Court was like,

" We would love for everyone's vote to

count if they're registered somewhere and

they're a citizen, right? But we can't

... It's an acceptable time, place,

and manner restriction

for a variety of reasons.

And that might have come out differently

if it was litigated now because of the

technology we have,

which at that time did not make it

practicable to let everybody vote from all

over the place because it was impossible

to count. If you live in a place with

962 precincts,

you cannot keep enough ballots at

every single precinct for another 961

precincts. You cannot

keep all those ballots,

especially when we don't have the kind

of technology we have now to scan, print,

produce, and count. So

after that time we invented,

they had the Let America Vote Act

and we now have provisional ballots.

And those provisional ballots

allow you to show up and say,

"I would like to vote." And

they say you're not registered.

But if you fill this out, the

ballot board's going to look at it.

If it's a situation where you forgot to

bring your ID and you don't want to go

home and ID is required in the state,

you have seven days from

election day to bring me your ID.

If you show up with your ID,

we're going to count your ballot,

right? The ballot board's going to look

for your registration and the voter

registrar. If they find it, your

ballot's going to count. If they don't,

your ballot will count as a registration.

So there are people who are showing up

and we're in a sticky situation because

our election judges are trained and it's

a civil rights issue to tell a person

you're not allowed to vote. And

it's a civil rights issue to say,

"I'm not giving you a ballot." But they're

also not lawyers and they're really

discouraged from giving legal opinions.

And they're not supposed to say,

"Are you a felon?" So

if you show up and say,

"I want to vote," they're

allowed to say, "Hey,

here's a list of things you have to

have to vote. You please read it.

You're not registered,

but I have to provide you this option

to vote provisionally." So you'll have

people who will fill out these provisional

ballots and they are not aware that

having a green card means that they

can't vote. There are people voting in

elections who shouldn't be,

but a lot of times it's because they

showed up and they were told they could

register by a registrar or their neighbor

who registered them who was a deputy

registrar or they filled

out a provisional ballot.

So that's a thing that happens.

They're on the voter roll,

but the idea that there is some surplus

number of them who are all full of

ill mal intent, who are swaying our

elections in broad numbers is, I think,

unserious. I also do think that

the pendulum has swung so far.

There are certain groups of people who

are invested in the idea that voter fraud

will never occur. That is also untrue.

I have litigated cases where people

literally broke the seals on the boxes,

stuffed ballots in the boxes, left the

seals on the floor and walked away.

We audit the paperwork and

every single box you have,

there's like 400 ways to keep it secure

and 400 ways for us to see if somebody

tampered with it.

When you seal a box,

you're sealing it with a seal number and

you write the seal number on a log and

you put it in the box before it's sealed.

And the seals are only produced

once and the paperworks,

there's all these different ways,

but you can't duplicate that.

So if you open a box and it hasn't been

open since the central counting room ran

it through the machine and there's more

ballots in there than there's supposed

to be and there's more ballots in there

than anybody voted at a voting location

and there's a bunch of ballots missing

from the ballot assignment sheet,

it's very clearly obvious that someone

voted them. Who did? I don't know.

But we're not talking about 30,000.

We're talking about 60 in a small county,

40, 50, 100. In Dallas County,

I've seen a couple cases,

4,000 ballots.

We're not talking about all of our

elections are unsecure. If I could tell

everybody anything,

it's that your vote is pretty secure

and that you should have absolutely no

concerns whatsoever about using a voting

machine. They're safer than paper.

They are one of the safest

things we have is that machine.

It's almost impossible for it to make a

mistake other than counting wrong if you

don't follow the bubbling rules. I

think that's what people get wrong.

People don't want to meet in the

middle. They don't want to make ...

I do understand that it's dangerous

to meet people in the middle.

You don't want to feel like

you're enabling them to

undermine democracy because

I think that's part of a

lawyer's responsibility.

I don't want to give anybody

the impression that our

democracy is unsafe in some

way or unsecure because

it's not. It is very secure.

But that's why it's so important

to deal with the few issues of

fraud or unlawful assistance or

counting ballots that aren't supposed to

be counted or unlawful voting of a mail

ballot because we want to maintain

people's faith in the system. But after

everything I've seen and touched, I

would tell you that those things happen,

but the same way that a tort lawyer

will tell you that it is technically

possible for a truck to flip

over and decapitate 20 people,

but that doesn't mean they're not

going to drive behind a truck.

You know what I mean? It is possible.

I want people to know that

that's a thing and it happens,

but I don't want anybody to think that

they should be frightened or worried or

that there is no proof that

there is a systemic theft of

elections or that there is a systemic

breach of the integrity and the counting

of ballots, that there's no evidence

that that is a true statement.

Well, that's comforting to hear.

I think one of the biggest takeaways

from this conversation to me is just for

folks who are tempted,

don't dabble, dare I say,

dangerous practice area because there

are so many traps that you could fall

into. You've mentioned several

today that I didn't know about,

and I've actually done one of these.

A lot of times we think about the

deadlines and things from the appellate

practitioner's standpoint, and I know

the deadlines are super tight for those,

but you've covered so many just

non-negotiable timelines that come out of

all the things that could be

litigated involving elections,

whether it be contests or getting

on the ballot and so forth.

So anybody who's even remotely considering

doing this as a practice area or

taking a case, please listen to the whole

episode and talk to someone like Liz,

I would say, because otherwise

it's a dangerous area to get into.

What's really scary for me as a lawyer,

I feel like we think if we follow

the rules that are in the statute,

I should get to go, right?

I should get my day.

And it's really a difficult thing for

people to grasp that you could file on

time,

you could observe every deadline in the

statute and you will still be kicked.

That is troubling for a lot of people.

I'll just say one really last thing,

you guys are probably sick of me,

but there's one thing that's happened

all the time that I probably should have

mentioned before because maybe somebody

might listen and they'll stop doing it

because it's so stressful for everyone

else. When you do your ballot challenges,

the statute says that if you want to

challenge somebody's place on the ballot,

you have to do it before the ballots

go out in the primary. So people think

they're going to get to litigate it before

that. And that is almost never true.

You have to file it and then suck it

up until after the election between the

primary and the general is when

you litigate it every single year.

Lawyers will read that

statute and they'll say, "Yes,

that's my deadline." And

then they'll file it.

And they might look up a couple of cases

in the district and not every single

case is going to mention the Ferguson

rule because it wasn't relevant.

So they're going to go, "Yes,

I have a case right here that says if

these people on their petition don't live

in the district, you can strike

them and now they don't have enough.

I want you to kick them out.

" So they will get a TRO ex parte like

in Dallas where you don't have to notify

anybody except two hours before.

They'll get a TRO,

then they'll set an injunction hearing

and they think because their opponent

hasn't said anything that they

understand that they're losing, right?

Then they'll hold a whole injunction

hearing that'll take two days and they've

spent 30 grand on this. They've got

witnesses, they hired an investigator,

they had some poor guy go knock on the

door of all these voters and they're

like, "I can prove to you these

people don't live," whatever it is.

When they're done, we'll stand up

and say, "This is very fascinating.

Ballots go out in two days. So sorry,

Charlie." And then the judge says, "Yeah,

you're out of here." And the guy

is just completely distraught.

It undermines the relationship between

lawyers and clients and it undermines

people's faith in the system because

they're like, "What are you talking about?

We did all this work. I spent a bunch

of money. I paid an investigator.

This took forever. We sat here

for two days. I took off work.

I paid a sheriff to subpoena 15 people.

What do you mean?" And

the lawyers are like,

"But I filed when the deadline said

I filed before the ballots went out.

" And that is not the

only thing that matters.

You're restrained by the schedule.

And it doesn't seem like a big deal,

but it happens so often. And it's

usually an attorney who's like,

"I'm a civil litigator. I

do injunctions all the time.

I read the statute." It's not fine.

While you may walk away and be like,

"That was expensive. It was

an expensive lesson for me.

That was a super expensive lesson for

your client, a really expensive one,

but it was also a massive pain in the

butt for everybody administering the

election because when that happens,

the election administrator sometimes

has to come down there and the DA who

represents them has to come down there.

And I've seen people subpoena the

Secretary of State. I've

seen them subpoena the AG.

They've got the party chair

and the election's happening.

People are working around the clock to

get mail-in ballots out to go through

ones that have come back in to make

sure they have everything they need for

those federal employees overseas,

like State Department employees and

the military to vote. And instead,

they're spending seven hours in this

courtroom and everybody knows that it

doesn't matter.

And a lot of judges want you to have

your record because they definitely don't

want to come back and do the

same thing again in three months.

So they'll let you do it. And we

all sit there and when you're done,

everybody's furious.

And it was a bunch of money and

it was a bunch of court time.

It's also unfair to the court because

those have to be heard. If you said it,

they have to hear it.

The only thing that goes in front of an

election matter in the Civil Practices

and Remedies Code is criminal,

constitutional issues, death penalty,

and SAPS are orders.

So you can bully your way to the front

of every single line. And people get,

especially if you live there, you

do not want to be that person.

The clerk will be mad at you.

The judge will be mad at you.

The DA will be mad at you. Everyone

will be mad at you for months.

You don't want to walk around in the

courthouse knowing that they're like,

" They can see me. I

can feel it. It's awful.

I hope that I can spare somebody out

there who thinks this is a good plan.

"Please don't do it. Please don't do it.

That is, I think, great advice,

but we don't want to let you go today

without following our usual pattern of

asking for a tip or a war story

from our guest. And so Liz,

we've got a lot of takeaways

from what you talked about today,

but do you have a parting tip or a war

story to share with our viewers and

listeners?

You know what?

Did you know I'm the only lawyer who's

ever litigated an election contest,

won the contest and their client

won the subsequent new election.

And her name is Judge Tracy Gray.

She's a district court

judge in Kauffman County.

And that election contest was

probably ... I've done a lot of stuff.

I used to work overseas. I

used to do human rights law.

I worked on some genocide

tribunals and stuff,

but this was still the coolest thing I've

ever seen happen in front of my face.

We found this woman who is filling

out mail-in ballots for other people,

and I had her on the stand. This woman

is under oath and she had a lawyer.

I asked the judge twice to it. I had to

stop and ask him for an admonishment.

And he was starting to admonish her

before she answered my question. And she's

like, " Oh, this lady stands up

and was like, I'm her attorney.

"I'm thinking," Are you asleep?

"And the judge is like, " Well,

I'm not going to admonish her

anymore if she has a lawyer.

"So then she proceeds to tell us that yes,

she filled out a bunch of ballots for

these people because they like her and

they totally trust her to fill them

out. She keeps the extras at the house.

And I'm like, " What do you mean

the extras? How many extras?

"Texas is a different state. In Texas,

you have to apply for a mail-in ballot.

You have to fill in the thing that

says," I request an application.

" They don't just give them out.

The law says they can only send you

an application if you request it.

So first you have to request the

application, then they send it to you,

fill it out, you send it back,

then they approve it. This woman

requested applications for a whole host of

elderly and in firm individuals and then

got their ballots and then filled them

out and voted them all the same way and

had no problem telling the judge she did

so. She was proud of herself, actually.

She was telling the judge

that she had the extras still.

And I said," Wait a minute,

what extras? "And she goes," Oh,

I just keep them around. They're really

good quality paper. "And I'm like,

" What do you mean? "And she's like,

" They work really great

for lists and stuff.

"And she reaches into her purse and

pulls out somebody else's ballot

by mail that she had in her purse.

And she had written down her grocery list

on it and it was like her grocery list

and then a note that was like,

" Please call Pastor so- and-so

about choir practice on Tuesday.

"And I was like, " I don't know

what I thought was going to happen,

but it wasn't that. "I'm in a

John Grisham novel. This is crazy.

When you're litigating, sometimes

you get to a point where you're like,

" I have totally won. I have super won.

I am the winningest winner that's

ever won. "But this is not even that.

This was like, " I don't

understand what's ...

I cannot compute that a person would

know that that's what we thought she did

and would show up and cop to like 10

felonies with a lawyer sitting there who's

I guess asleep and then

yanked the evidence out of

her person. I was like, Hey,

do you mind if I look at that? I want

to see what kind of paper that is.

"And she hands it to me and the moment I

had it in my hands, the judge was like,

" Give it to me. Give it to me right

now. "We gave it to her and he was like,

" This can't be happening. "He's

like, " How many of these do you have?

"She's like, " I don't know. "He's like,

" Besides the ones you filled out

and voted already in this race,

how many applications do

you have? "Because when you

apply for a mail-in ballot,

you can get it for a whole period,

like a whole election cycle.

It's called an annual, an application

for an annual ballot by mail.

So when you fill it out,

you tell them," I'm going to vote in

this primary and the general and the

municipal and the ...

So you're applying to get eight ballots

over the course of the next year and a

half or whatever.

"So she then tells them that she has

dozens of these just hanging out at her

house. And I thought," This is amazing,

but not amazing. "You know what I mean?

It was terrible.

Not amazing in a good way.

No, not amazing in a good way. Definitely.

And there's an Eddie Izzard skit from

a long time ago or a routine where he

talks about how some people are

criminals and you think that is terrible.

And then when you get to a certain

point where they've committed so much,

the magnitude of their crime is so

extensive that you think that's almost

impressive.

You have to get up super early in

the morning to get that kind of stuff

accomplished. And I just

remember thinking that is ...

Imagine if she had a real job, you

know what I mean?That's ambitious.

Those people are real. It occurs.

Like I said, it's not very common,

but that was maybe the craziest thing

I've ever had happen. To this day,

she got investigated by the agent.

The after effects of copying to

several felonies on the stand are never

positive. But I remember the whole time

I was sitting there thinking," I feel

like maybe I should find

out. Should I tell the bar?

This woman says she's a lawyer. She says

she's hurt. She's objected to nothing.

The judge gave her multiple opportunities

to plead the Fifth and she was like,

no,

I'd love to tell you about how I figured

out how to get all these and where I

keep them and demonstrate my culpability

by showing current possession of

someone else's ballot. Absolutely

zero problems. Whenever I think, man,

I'm stupid. When everybody has

imposter syndrome, I remind myself,

I have never let my client plead to cop

to several felonies and then produce the

illicit evidence of a crime on

the stand so I feel like I'm fine.

"In open court.

Yeah. So I feel like I'm fine. That's

how I remind myself I'm not that person.

So interesting.

If that's your measuring stick,

then yeah, I think you're fine.

That was truly a war story, not one

that we get something like every time.

So thank you for sharing that.

And thanks for being with us.

It's highly educational.

You're welcome.

We have the transcript of that exchange

framed in the office because it's crazy.

Totally can. Well, we

appreciate your time, Liz.

It's very informative and

so thanks for being with us.

You're welcome. It was

really nice to meet you guys.

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