Long story short
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.
Challenger Daniel "Danny" Meza now holds the District 2 position—previously held by Ernestine Pierce—and Meza attended his first regular board meeting as a trustee on Dec. 5.
“I'm just happy to be here, and I hope to serve the college and all the constituents, faculty, staff, students, as best I can,” Meza said Dec. 5.
District 2 stretches across north Harris County, covering the communities of Spring, Aldine and Humble, according to the LSCS website.
Diving deeper
Due to LSCS’ ballot 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, as previously reported by Community Impact. Ten Harris County precincts were “split precincts” in this race and therefore were unable to provide district-specific vote totals.
LSCS still awaits a ruling from the Southern District of Texas court to verify the results of the Nov. 5 election and to determine whether a new election would need to be held.
“Whether I'm on [on the board] or out, I plan to work with our chancellor,” Pierce said Dec. 5.
According to LSCS, votes cast—excluding the unverified votes—for the District 2 position are:
- Meza received 22,429 votes, or 51.04% of votes
- Pierce received 21,513 votes, or 48.96% of votes
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. Therefore, a runoff election will be held for incumbent Michael Stoma and Shashanka P. Ashili on Dec. 14.
According to LSCS, 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
