“For us, it’s going away one election too late,” lamented Vlad Davidiuk, the spokesman for the county’s Republican Party. Even the day after the election, he blasted Hidalgo as “absolutely and indisputably unqualified for this position … There was no appeal to Lina Hidalgo’s qualities or qualifications. She has none. It’s completely a fluke.”

Many people inside and outside Texas scratch their head at the title of “county judge”; it’s the county government’s executive officer. Only in sparsely populated counties do county judges still maintain any sort of a judicial role. The Harris County judge oversees a $3.7 billion budget and nearly 17,000 county employees with responsibilities ranging from law enforcement to hospitals to road construction to flood control.

“This is the most powerful office [in Texas] outside of a statewide office,” said Castro, who served as President Barack Obama’s housing-and-urban-development secretary and as San Antonio’s mayor. Texas political scientists say that’s a fair assessment, perhaps tied with the mayor of Houston. But they say Hidalgo can’t take much credit for winning the post.

“It’s effectively straight-ticket voting, pure and simple,” said Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist and a leading expert on Texas politics. “It wasn’t about her. She was elected because of straight-ticket Democratic votes, which were fueled largely by a strong Democratic-turnout machine, opposition to Donald Trump, and Beto O’Rourke’s appeal. And she didn’t do anything to disqualify herself … At the margins, being a Latina tends to be slightly positive. But by and large, the Democratic Party won that election, not Lina Hidalgo.”

Te Department of Veterans Affairs is suffering from a series of information technology glitches that has caused GI Bill benefit payments covering education and housing to be delayed or — in the case of Roundtree — never be delivered.
"I’m about to lose everything that I own and become homeless," Roundtree said. "I don’t want to be that veteran on the street begging for change because I haven’t received what I was promised."

Without the GI Bill's housing stipend, Roundtree was kicked out of his apartment and is now living on his sister's couch, miles from school, where he feels like a burden on his family. The new living situation required him to move all his belongings into a storage container, which he can no longer afford. Now all of his possessions are in danger of being auctioned off by the storage facility.

"I’m about to lose everything that I own and become homeless. I don’t want to be that veteran on the street begging for change because I haven’t received what I was promised."

Roundtree said that because of his extremely strained finances, he is forced to choose between spending money on public transportation to get to his marketing classes or buying food — not both. At the end of the day, the veteran said he often makes himself go to sleep hungry.

Elias expects when the machine recount concludes that the gap between Nelson and Scott will shrink substantially.
The main reason? Undervotes.

There’s already been media speculation about why Broward County, a Democratic bastion, saw 24,992 fewer votes counted for U.S. Senate than for Governor, despite the race appearing first on the ballot.

Outlets like FiveThirtyEight suggest poor ballot design could play a role, but Elias dismissed that.

If design were a major element, Elias said, then ballots counted in Broward County since Tuesday would have similarly discrepancies. But Elias says as he observes election returns, the most recently counted ballots don’t show a significant deficit in Senate votes.

“Interviews with more than a dozen Republican strategists and officials paint a picture of a candidate who refused to listen to advice, was unwilling to put energy into fundraising and failed to set up a basic ‘get out the vote’ operation.”

“Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, struggled to pay his campaign staff on time and at one point lacked a working phone system at his Johnson County campaign office, according to GOP sources familiar with the campaign. And people who offered to volunteer were never contacted.”

Sid one long-time GOP operative: “It was the most dysfunctional thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”