On Nov. 19, Lone Star College System’s board of trustees called for a runoff election for one trustee position, but college system leaders are still awaiting a court decision for another trustee position with unclear election results.
What’s happening?
For the Nov. 5 election, 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.
Despite the error, District 1 incumbent Michael Stoma will face challenger Shashanka P. Ashili in a runoff election Dec. 14, according to LSCS’ website. Stoma and Ashili were the top two vote-getters in the Nov. 5 election, in spite of “split precinct” votes that were unable to be sorted, according to a Nov. 19 presentation from LSCS.
Harris County has seven “split precincts” in this race that do not have district-specific voting data, according to LSCS’ website.
According to LSCS’ presentation, the canvassed results in the Nov. 5 election for District 1 are:
- 26,130 votes, or 44.81% of votes, cast for Stoma
- 20,277 votes, or 34.77% of votes, cast for Ashili
- 11,907 votes, or 20.42% of votes, cast for Paul A. Santillan
Stay tuned
For the District 2 trustee position, challenger Daniel "Danny" Meza was declared the winner of the Nov. 5 election, according to LSCS. However, LSCS is still awaiting a federal court decision to verify the results.
Ten Harris County precincts were “split precincts” in this race and therefore were unable to provide district-specific vote totals, according to LSCS’ presentation.
The number of unverified votes in this race “is mathematically significant,” so the outcome could change, according to LSCS.
According to LSCS’ presentation, the canvassed results in the Nov. 5 election for District 2 are:
- 22,429 votes, or 51.04% of votes, cast for Meza
- 21,513 votes, or 48.96% of votes, cast for Ernestine Pierce
