Harris County elected 19 Black women to its bench in 2018, 17 of them for the first time, taking Black women from 8 of 75 county judgeships to 25. The judges who came in on that wave are now asking voters not to skip the part of the ballot they sit on.
In the race for the 177th District Court, the winner took the seat by 5,864 votes while 110,630 voters left that line blank. In 2024, a Harris County ballot ran to between 50 and 70 contests, and Republicans took 10 down-ballot seats.
“But please do not skip the race,” said Michelle Moore, judge of the Texas 314th District Court. “And the judges in the races that really matter, or those that are at the bottom, those are the ones that impact the community.” Her court takes children from the age of 10.
The margins have already moved. Moore took 57 percent in 2018 and 52 percent in 2022. Tonya Jones, judge of County Criminal Court at Law No. 15, took 55 percent and then 50. Erica Hughes, judge of the 151st Civil Court, named the mechanism. “One of the problems I see is that straight ticket voting from 2018 is not available,” she said.
Melissa M. Morris, who presides over the 263rd Criminal Court, put the stake plainly. “The reason that the law is an authority is because of the fact that people believe in the process,” she said.
