RICHMOND, Texas — A Fort Bend County judge on Wednesday rejected former Precinct 4 candidate Brittanye Morris’s bid to overturn her 144-vote loss to Commissioner-elect April Jones, ruling that a countywide poll-book outage on runoff day did not materially affect the outcome, and further finding that Morris was not eligible to have run for the seat in the first place.
The ruling, signed Aug. 12 by a visiting judge in the 240th Judicial District, brings to a close a two-day trial over the May 26 Democratic primary runoff, in which Jones defeated Morris 3,232 votes to 3,088. A recount had already confirmed Jones’s win before Morris filed her election contest.
In the final judgment, the court found that Morris “has not established by clear and convincing evidence” that the poll-book error affected the outcome, and concluded the true result of the election could be determined. Her request for a new election was denied.
The judge also granted a counterclaim from Jones, ruling that Morris’s voter registration in Precinct 4, dated Dec. 5, 2025, but not effective until Jan. 4, 2026, according to the county, came after the deadline to file for a place on the primary ballot. The court found Jones proved by a preponderance of the evidence that Morris was not an eligible candidate for the seat.
Each side was ordered to bear its own costs.
The trial
Morris’s attorney told jurors in opening statements that the county had already admitted an employee uploaded the wrong election file on runoff day, triggering a roughly three-hour outage in the electronic poll-book check-in system. He argued the scale of the error alone called the results into question and that a new election was the only fair remedy.
Morris, testifying remotely from a hospital bed after the judge found her fit to do so, recounted being turned away from the George Memorial Library polling place around 3 p.m. She said she was told to return in 30 to 40 minutes while the system updated and was not offered a provisional ballot. She said she later drove to the Rosenberg Annex polling location, where she was able to vote around 4:15 p.m.
Two other witnesses for Morris described similar experiences. Mary Rangel, a 68-year Fort Bend resident, said she was turned away at George Memorial Library and saw at least five other voters turned away as well, without being offered provisional ballots. Gregory Lyons, a Richmond resident who said he intended to vote for Morris, testified he was told the system was down between 2 and 2:30 p.m. and to return in about 30 minutes; he said he was unable to come back because of time constraints and was not offered a provisional ballot.
Jones, called to testify by Morris’s attorney, said she voted early and did not go to the polls on runoff day itself. She said she “floated around” to four or five polling places that afternoon between 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. and testified, “I did not observe anything to that nature” regarding voters being turned away. Pressed repeatedly by Morris’s attorney to say whether it was unfair that voters were turned away or not offered provisional ballots, Jones declined to answer directly, responding only, “Polling places are open between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.” Jones said that had she been the one trailing by 144 votes, she would have requested a recount.
Fort Bend Elections Administrator Chase Wilson testified that the vendor, VR Systems, confirmed an incorrect voter file, later identified as the file for the June municipal runoff rather than the May election, as initially reported, was uploaded around 2 to 2:30 p.m. Wilson said the fix itself took about 15 minutes but that it took several hours for the correction to propagate fully across the county’s 70 polling locations. He said poll workers were instructed, through the poll-book messaging system and follow-up calls, to offer affected voters a provisional ballot, the option to wait roughly 30 minutes, or the option to return later. Wilson also testified that the employee responsible for the upload was terminated, not allowed to resign as had been rumored.
Jones’s attorney, focusing his case on Morris’s eligibility rather than the outage, presented her voter registration history as an exhibit, arguing she was not effectively registered in Precinct 4 until after the candidate filing deadline. He told the court Morris’s challenge amounted to an attempt to discard the votes of thousands of residents in favor of a small, unproven group of voters.
What’s next
The judgment is final, and all relief not expressly granted was denied. It was not immediately clear whether Morris intends to appeal.
Following the ruling, Jones released a statement: “Today’s outcome is a reminder that ethics, accountability, and the rule of law matter. As the Democratic Nominee for Fort Bend County Commissioner, Precinct 4, I will continue to stand for integrity, respect the legal process, and remain accountable to all the people of Fort Bend County, not just Precinct 4. Leadership means doing what is right, even when it is difficult.”