Former congressional hopefuls allege fraud in lawsuit against Escobar, county elections dept.

Former Democratic congressional hopefuls John Carillo, Norma Chavez and Enrique Garcia are petitioning the State of Texas to inspect the election records of the Democratic Party of Texas and El Paso County, alleging fraud and claiming the results of the Democratic congressional primary are “not the true outcome.”

Former El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar and El Paso County Elections Administrator Lisa Wise are named as respondents in the lawsuit obtained by ABC-7.

“John Carillo, Norma Chavez and Enrique Garcia generally contend that an election officer, or other persons involved in the administration of the election, including Lisa Wise, engaged in fraud or illegal conduct,” the document states. In the lawsuit, the petitioners further allege the fraud involved, “tampering with the initial programming of some of the hard drives before the election began and distributing those hard drives to the high producing voting locations to extract votes from Petitioners in favor of Veronica Escobar.”

On March 6, 2018, the petitioners sought their party’s nomination for the 16th Congressional District seat vacated by Congressman Beto O’Rourke. Escobar easily won the Democratic nomination for the congressional seat with more than 30,000 votes, about 61 percent. Escobar received more votes than all of her challengers combined. Former El Paso ISD Board President Dori Fenenbock came in second with 22 percent of the vote.

ABC-7 reached out to Carillo, who said he did not have a comment. Carillo asked ABC-7 to reach out to Garcia. ABC-7 left messages with Chavez and Garcia, who have to return our calls.

The petitioners are asking Escobar and Wise to produce for inspection all documents “that claim the outcome of the contested election, as shown by the final canvass, is the true outcome.”

The petitioners are also asking for 10 days to inspect election records held by the Democratic Party and El Paso County and to conduct a forensic analysis on the computers and hard drives used in the election.

ABC-7 reached out to the county elections office, several times, but could not reach Wise for comment.

In a statement emailed to ABC-7, Escobar said, “Concerns over voter fraud are serious and should be examined. However, it is concerning that there are accusations being made in a lawsuit without any shred of evidence. If these accusations are proven baseless — as I believe they will be — my concern is that such an irresponsible act will have unfortunately fed public cynicism against our electoral system and may negatively impact voter turnout in a community that already struggles to get voters to the polls.”