Harris County prosecutors will not charge anyone with crimes connected to the November 2022 election, which was marred by paper ballot shortages and other administrative issues, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said Tuesday.
Ogg’s office and the Texas Rangers launched an investigation into the election following complaints by voters. The probe resulted in one unrelated criminal case — a Harris County employee faces felony charges of falsifying employment time cards — but no findings of fraud or other election-related crimes.
“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,” said Harris County Assistant District Attorney Michael Levin, who prosecutes public corruption cases.
A Harris County staffer accused of failing to allocate enough paper to polling locations during the November 2022 election faces felony charges of falsifying employment time cards, District Attorney Kim Ogg announced Tuesday.
Ogg said Darryl Blackburn, a Harris County election worker responsible for deciding how much paper to deliver to each polling site in 2022, stole county time while working two jobs. The shortages opened the door to accusations by some conservatives of election misconduct, though prosecutors did not accuse Blackburn of intentionally tampering with the election and the charges are not related to the alleged failure to deliver paper to polling sites.
Blackburn’s lawyer, Charles Flood, could not be immediately reached for comment.
Twenty-two Republican candidates who lost races filed lawsuits seeking to throw out the election results. All but one of the lawsuits has been dropped or dismissed.
The charges come nearly a year after the Texas Secretary of State’s office published an audit that found “multiple failures” that hampered voting. In 2023, Texas Republicans created a new state law targeting Harris County, eliminating its elections office and transferring election duties to the County Clerk and Tax Assessor.
Ogg said her office was legally required to open an investigation after citizens logged complaints about the election, largely regarding a “lack of paper ballots,” Ogg said. In Blackburn’s case, investigators found he merely gave each polling site a roughly equal amount of paper, with no attention paid to how many people historically voted at each location.
“It’s ironic. People are looking for complex, conspiratorial reasons for things happening, and often it boils down to incompetence and greed,” Ogg said. “And even though that was affected on a relatively small scale by one person, it affected millions of us.”
Blackburn, who had no previous criminal record, has been charged with five counts of tampering with a governmental record, a felony, for lying on county time sheets while he worked a second job in the oil and gas industry. He was also charged with one count of felony theft of between $2,500 and $30,000.
Blackburn was released on bond.
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