The Bexar County Republican Party and its nominee for district attorney Ashley Foster tried this week to remove independent candidate Jason Wolff from the November ballot, arguing that widespread problems with how his petitions were notarized should invalidate hundreds of the signatures he needed to qualify.
After a daylong court fight that examined everything from Wolff’s TikTok videos to testimony from the people who collected his signatures, a Bexar County judge found that errors did in fact occur in the notarization process — but stopped short of removing Wolff from the ballot.
The ruling leaves Wolff in a three-way race for Bexar County criminal district attorney against Foster and Democratic nominee Luz Elena Chapa, though Foster and the Bexar County Republican Party say their challenge isn’t over.
Foster and Bexar County GOP Chair Kris Coons sued late last month seeking to invalidate enough of Wolff’s petition signatures to disqualify him, while also requesting an emergency order preventing Bexar County Elections Administrator Michelle Carew from moving forward with his name on the ballot.
Unlike candidates who secure a party’s nomination through a primary, Wolff had to collect signatures from at least 500 eligible Bexar County voters who did not participate in a party primary or runoff to qualify as an independent.
Court records show Wolff submitted 1,147 signatures to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. The state accepted 710 after checking whether signers met the eligibility requirements, placing Wolff on the statewide ballot certified last Friday.
Foster testified that she began scrutinizing Wolff’s signature drive after seeing videos he posted to TikTok. In one, Wolff told supporters they could drive behind his law office and honk their horns for someone to come outside with a petition. In another, posted days before the filing deadline, he encouraged people circulating petitions to bring them to him so he could file them.
After obtaining Wolff’s petitions from the state, Foster said she found that nearly 90% of the petition pages had been notarized by Shaina Ochoa, a legal assistant and notary at Wolff’s law firm.
Foster’s lawsuit alleged widespread problems with how Ochoa handled those petitions, including that some circulators had not appeared before her and sworn to their affidavits when she notarized the documents. Foster argued that the defects should invalidate the signatures collected on those pages and, if enough were thrown out, leave Wolff short of the 500 he needed to qualify.
State law requires the people who collect petition signatures, known as circulators, to swear that they witnessed each signature before an authorized officer.
Christina Adkins, elections director for the Secretary of State’s Office, testified that although her office certified Wolff for the ballot last week, it does not typically investigate whether circulators actually appeared before a notary when a petition contains the required notarization.
Instead, the state treats signatures covered by a properly completed affidavit as valid unless evidence later proves otherwise.
Adkins testified that a challenge could still be brought after the state’s initial review, but said she had not encountered one based on allegations like those against Wolff during her 14 years with the Secretary of State’s Office.
Whether the circulators actually followed that process became the central focus of Tuesday’s testimony before Judge Christine Hortick in the 225th District Court.
Ochoa repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as Foster’s attorney, Justin Nichols, questioned her about when circulators appeared before her, when their affidavits were notarized and why some were later asked to return and sign her notarial record book.
The five circulators who testified largely stood behind the underlying signatures, saying they personally witnessed voters sign the petitions and believed the signatures were legitimate. Their testimony, however, revealed problems with how some of their affidavits were handled.
Sean Lester testified that Ochoa was not present when he initially turned his completed petitions over to Wolff. He said he later returned at Wolff’s request, met Ochoa and signed her notarial record book. Other circulators testified that Ochoa was present when they submitted their petitions, though some were also called back later to sign the book.
Foster’s lawsuit separately questioned whether some voter signatures had been forged, but that allegation played a smaller role at trial. Under questioning from Wolff’s attorney, Foster acknowledged she is not a handwriting expert and did not have firsthand knowledge that the signatures were forged. No handwriting expert testified at the hearing.
One circulator acknowledged filling in missing voter identification numbers after collecting signatures, but none of the signatures she submitted were among the 710 ultimately accepted by the Secretary of State.
Hortick ultimately found that there were problems with the notarization process.
In her final judgment, Hortick found that Ochoa “committed errors in the notarization” of pages circulated by five people and that those circulators were not administered the required oath until July 28 or later — after the dates listed on their petition pages. Hortick also found that Wolff collected pages from some circulators and personally administered an oath to them before the pages were later notarized by someone else.
At the same time, Hortick found pages circulated by Wolff and five others, containing a combined 515 signatures, were “facially valid,” meaning the problems were not apparent from the face of the documents.
What happens to those pages could now become the central question in a higher court.
In an email to attorneys explaining her decision, Hortick said she had made factual findings that could be used by an appeals court to decide whether or not to count the signatures because of the notary’s mistakes.
The plaintiffs’ separate request to immediately stop Wolff’s name from being placed on the ballot ran into a jurisdictional problem.
Merideth MacIntire, an attorney with the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office representing Carew, argued that the elections administrator was not the official who determined whether Wolff qualified. That decision was made by the Secretary of State’s Office, which had already certified Wolff for the ballot, leaving Carew responsible for preparing the election based on that certification.
Carew also testified that ballot preparation is already well underway. Test ballots have been printed and information sent to vendors, with logic and accuracy testing approaching ahead of a Sept. 19 federal deadline to send ballots to military and overseas voters.
Stopping the process, Carew said, could put as many as 30,000 mail ballots on hold and force election workers to compress weeks of preparation into several days.
Hortick ultimately granted Carew’s plea to the jurisdiction, dismissed the claims against her and denied Foster and Coons’ request for an injunction preventing her from moving forward with Wolff’s name on the ballot.
Wolff celebrated the ruling, saying the court had rejected an effort to deny voters a choice in November.
“This was an important case, not just for my campaign, but for the principle that voters should be allowed to choose their candidates at the ballot box,” Wolff said in a statement.
Foster and the Republican Party say the ruling is not the end of their challenge.
“While the court in this case stopped short of removing Mr. Wolff from the ballot now, we believe she made the necessary findings that will allow the Secretary of State or a higher court to do so, and we will pursue those avenues,” Nichols said Thursday on behalf of his clients.
