After a snafu with election ballots for the Lone Star College System’s board of trustee races in November, a runoff election will be held for one trustee position while a court decision will determine the next steps for the other position, according to a Nov. 7 emailed statement from LSCS officials.

The current situation

The LSCS board of trustee positions for districts 1 and 2 were mistakenly placed on all Harris County ballots within the system’s boundaries after LSCS staff made an error when submitting the ballots, as previously reported by Community Impact. The positions should have been on district-specific ballots.

Due to the error, 4,963 votes for the District 1 trustee position and 7,489 votes for the District 2 position from the Nov. 5 election cannot be verified, according to LSCS’ Nov. 7 emailed statement.

According to a section of LSCS’ website devoted to the Nov. 5 election results, the votes cast—excluding the unverified votes—for the District 1 position are:
  • Incumbent Michael Stoma received 26,060 votes, or 44.83% of votes
  • Challenger Shashanka P. Ashili received 20,201 votes, or 34.75% of votes
  • Challenger Paul A. Santillan received 11,866 votes, or 20.41% of votes
According to the website, votes cast—excluding the unverified votes—for the District 2 position are:
  • Challenger Daniel "Danny" Meza received 22,367 votes, or 51.08% of votes
  • Incumbent Ernestine Pierce received 21,422 votes, or 48.92% of votes
Next steps


For the District 1 race, the number of votes unable to be verified “would not provide any one candidate with a majority of the votes cast,” according to LSCS’ statement. Therefore, a runoff election will be called for Stoma and Ashili after the votes are canvassed on Nov. 19.

For the District 2 race, LSCS’s board of trustees voted—under the consent agenda, which is made up of multiple items voted on in one motion—on Nov. 7 to seek help from the court of the Southern District of Texas. The number of unverified votes in this race “is mathematically significant,” so an outcome could not be determined, and a new election may need to be held, according to the LSCS statement.

During the Nov. 7 trustee meeting, Stoma said trustees will discuss in December how to handle reorganizing the board since the election results are not final.

What else?


District 1 covers portions of west Harris County including the communities of Cy-Fair and Cypress, according to LSCS’ website. District 2 stretches across north Harris County, covering the communities of Spring, Aldine and Humble.