The Tarrant District Attorney’s Office is investigating a complaint that a former Mansfield school board candidate cast a provisional ballot when he was ineligible to vote.
The voter, Angel Hidalgo, did not have an active registration when he cast his ballot on March 1 for the March 5 primary, according to documents obtained by the Star-Telegram through an open records request. A Texas registration becomes effective 30 days after it is submitted and accepted. Hidalgo registered to vote in Tarrant County on Feb. 25 after he moved from Dallas County.
A resident of the Mansfield school district filed a complaint about Hidalgo’s vote with the Tarrant County Election Integrity Unit on March 28. The Sheriff’s Office conducted the initial investigation in May.
”We received information from the Sheriff’s Office regarding Angel Hidalgo’s voting eligibility. Our office is currently investigating the matter,” a District Attorney’s Office spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.
Hidalgo was declared ineligible for the school board seat because he had not been a registered voter in the district for the required six months before the May 4 election.
In a letter to the school district’s attorney obtained by the Star-Telegram, Hidalgo wrote that his voter registration was mistakenly linked to another address and that he voted in the primary after “rectifying the situation.”
Provisional ballots are for voters who aren’t sure about their eligibility. The election judge at the Mansfield sub-courthouse did not count Hidalgo’s ballot because his registration was not active, according to the Sheriff’s Office investigation.
The Sheriff’s Office determined that Hidalgo’s “intent to violate the voter laws would be difficult to prove.” In addition, the investigator determined that because the vote was disqualified “no crime was violated since his vote was not counted.”
But the investigator referred the case to the District Attorney’s Office to “follow up and determine if a law was violated.”
The investigator’s report also states that the Texas Board of Education or Mansfield Police Department would be the agencies to investigate any possible fraud related to Hidalgo’s vote.
“This claim was thoroughly and independently investigated without regard to political affiliation,” a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. “Each case is investigated based on its own merits and then either dismissed or referred to the DA’s office for prosecution.”
Asked Monday about the sheriff’s investigation and the letter he wrote to the school district’s attorney, Hidalgo said, “I am finished. I am done.” Hidalgo did not respond to a text message on Tuesday asking about the DA’s investigation.
A handful of residents have spoken out at Mansfield school board and Tarrant County Commissioners Court meetings asking for an investigation into Hidalgo’s vote.
One of those speakers, Allan Turner, filed the complaint with the Tarrant County Election Integrity Unit. The unit is run by the district attorney and sheriff’s offices. It has not prosecuted a case since it formed in February 2023.
Turner said he believes Hidalgo knowingly voted illegally and drew comparisons Crystal Mason, a Tarrant County woman who was sentenced to five years on an illegal voting conviction after she cast a provisional ballot in 2016.
Mason has been in a legal battle with the Tarrant County DA’s Office since 2018 over a provisional ballot she cast in 2016 while she was on supervised release for a felony tax fraud conviction, which made her ineligible to vote in Texas. Her case has received national attention and drawn criticism as an example of voter suppression .
A Texas appeals court overturned Mason’s conviction on March 28 because it determined Mason did not have actual knowledge that she could not vote. Her provisional ballot was not counted.
District Attorney Phil Sorrells has said he wants Mason’s conviction reinstated. He told commissioners during a May 7 meeting that he intended to send a message to “would-be illegal voters.”
The Mansfield school district’s leadership and board members were aware for months that Hidalgo was not eligible for the school board seat but did not declare him ineligible until after the deadline to remove him from the ballot. He received 36.72% of the vote .
Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons — who represents Mansfield — asked about Hidalgo’s case during a June 4 commissioners court meeting and briefing on the Election Integrity Unit .
Tarrant County Administrator Chandler Merritt handled the briefing because Sheriff Bill Waybourn and Sorells did not attend.
Merritt said the Sheriff’s Office had received over 70 complaints about improper voting, and the District Attorney’s Office had investigated 12 complaints. When Simmons asked Merritt about Hidalgo, he responded that he had no information about the case and was not “privy to active investigation details.”
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