A Harris County, Texas, official is facing six felony charges following an investigation of the county’s 2022 midterm election, the district attorney announced on Aug. 13.
Darryl Blackburn, a former employee of the now-defunct Harris County Election Administrator’s Office, has been charged with five counts of tampering with a government document and one count of theft by a public official, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said at a press conference.
“This individual was specifically assigned to see that paper was allocated properly in all of the polling locations,” Ogg said. “He had other responsibilities equally as important, but this is really the nuts and bolts of the election, the allocation of paper, and it is at the heart of much of what the problem was back in November of 2022.”
An audit conducted by the Texas secretary of state found that Harris County’s midterm elections were marred by myriad administrative issues, including ballot shortages, equipment malfunctions, inadequately trained staff, incomplete paperwork, and data discrepancies.
A separate Texas Rangers investigation discovered via Blackburn’s LinkedIn profile that he was simultaneously working two full-time jobs—one with the county and one with a major oil and gas company.
Michael Levine, chief assistant district attorney for public corruption, said Blackburn transitioned from a temporary to a remote, full-time employee in April 2021. In October of that year, he began working at the oil and gas company, where he “frequently worked in person.”
The result, Ogg said, was that Blackburn “didn’t do his job for Harris County.”
The arrangement also meant that Blackburn’s representations on government documents of working “full-time” for both employers were false, Levine said.
“This is 15 months of sustained double-dipping on time sheets,” he said.
In May 2022, Blackburn requested paid parental leave from the county and, over the course of 12 weeks, received nearly $21,000. Under that policy, employees are prohibited from working another full-time job while receiving benefits. Blackburn signed a form acknowledging that policy.
“At the time he signed that document, he had already been working another full-time job for six months,” Levine said. “He continued to do it throughout the period of his paid parental leave from the county. That’s given rise to the other charge we filed, which is known as theft by public servant.”
That charge is punishable by up to 10 years in state prison. The other five charges are each punishable by up to two years in state jail.
“While working for the elections office, Mr. Blackburn not only stole thousands of dollars from Harris County in the sense that he lied on timesheets, but much more importantly, he stole individuals’ rights to vote—a basic constitutional right in our democracy,” Ogg said.
As for a motive, officials said they found no evidence that Blackburn sought to subvert local elections with his actions.
“I want to be very clear about this, this investigation has revealed no evidence that anyone intentionally acted in any way to suppress voter turnout or to close certain voting locations based on known voting tendencies. Nor did anyone take any action that we found with an intent to sway an election,” Levine said.
“The motive here was much simpler and much older. It was greed.”
In total, Blackburn received more than $90,000 from the county and more than $250,000 from his secondary employer during the overlapping period.
New Election Ordered
Irregularities in the county’s 2022 judicial election for the 180th District Court led a Texas judge to order a new election in May.Initially, Republican candidate Tami Pierce was found to have lost the November 2022 election to incumbent Democrat Judge DaSean Jones by 449 votes. Pierce filed a lawsuit challenging the results, citing the ballot paper shortages and various other administrative issues.
Visiting Judge David Peeples of Bexar County ultimately found that 1,430 votes were cast illegally in the election, and another 321 votes were cast for Jones after normal voting hours.
The after-hours votes were cast under a local district judge’s order that was later stayed by the Texas Supreme Court. As for the illegal votes, 983 were found to have been cast by those living outside Harris County, and 445 were cast by voters who did not show photo ID or another valid form of identification.
As those 1,751 votes exceeded Jones’s margin of victory, they “cast doubt on the true outcome” of the race, Peeples ruled, ordering a do-over.
“Judge Peeples’s decision to order a new election confirms what the Harris County GOP has been saying since 2022—[that] the previous election administrations’ handling of our elections was beyond negligent, resulting in voters’ confidence in our elections being damaged,” Harris County GOP Chair Cindy Siegel said at the time.
Jones, who remains on the bench, is appealing the judge’s order. However, the county’s 2022 election problems have had other consequences.
Last year, state lawmakers passed a law dissolving the Harris County’s Elections Administrator’s Office and returned its associated duties to the county tax assessor-collector and county clerk.
Another new law allows the Texas secretary of state to oversee elections in counties with a recurring pattern of election administration problems and a population of more than 4 million.
Harris County, which includes Houston, is the only county that meets that threshold with a population of about 4.8 million, according to the Texas Demographic Center.
