A court on Wednesday dismissed a former School District 49 board member’s claims that she was wrongfully excluded from the November election ballot, ruling in favor of the district’s designated election official who disqualified the candidate.

As a result, Ivy Liu will not appear on this year’s ballot and is not eligible for election.

“We fully support the court’s thoughtful ruling to deny Ivy Liu’s petition to appear as a candidate in the upcoming BoE election,” D-49 spokesperson David Nancarrow wrote in a statement. “The outcome confirms what we knew to be true at the outset of the hearing: Ms. Liu did not meet the basic requirements to run as a candidate in Director District 5.

“The court’s decision also validates our complete trust in the district’s Designated Election Officer to faithfully and lawfully complete her required obligations to submit only verified candidates to the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder to prepare official election materials. We anticipate a well-run election and await the careful discernment of our voters to select the best candidates to serve the students, families and workforce of School District 49.”

Former School District 49 board member petitions district to certify her on November ballot

Liu last week filed a petition with the Fourth Judicial District Court to halt the ballot certification process and deem her eligible for election. The district’s designated election official, Lanette DePaul, did not certify her candidacy because she lacked the minimum required number of supporting signatures, according to the district. Liu’s residency status was also a point of contention, with district officials suggesting she did not live in the area that she sought to serve.

D-49 board positions are divided into five director districts. Board members must live in the district they represent. Those boundaries were redrawn this spring, effectively writing Liu out of her district and posing a dilemma: If Liu stayed in her position through the end of her term, she would not be eligible for reelection. If she moved into another director district beforehand, she would lose out on the final months of her term but be eligible for election to a new one. She chose to vacate her seat and run for election.

Text conversations admitted as evidence suggest Liu was not a resident of the proper director district when she picked up her election packet on Aug. 25, meaning she was not eligible to run.

Messages Liu sent on Aug. 25, the day she filed her candidate petition, “implore” DePaul to let her run from her current address, according to the ruling. On Sept. 4, Liu submitted a second petition with an updated address. Liu said she sent the initial packet by accident.

School District 49 board member ruled ineligible for reelection says ‘they don’t know who they’re dealing with’

“The only apparent reason for (Liu) to move, which she implicitly admits in her texts and testimony, is to run for office in (director district five),” the ruling reads. “She has not changed her driver’s license address, mailing address with the post office, or any other address. She claimed her home was now rented out to other bona fide tenants, but admitted under cross-examination that she had been renting out rooms in her home for three years. She admitted she has not rented out her personal bedroom (at her alleged former address).”

The court suggests Liu backdated one or both of the leases she provided. DePaul “reasonably concluded” that Liu was not credibly supporting her claim of residency in the district for which she sought election.

The court also concluded that Liu did not receive the minimum-required 50 signatures to support her nomination. Whereas the district said she received just 46 valid signatures, Liu said she received 53.

DePaul was unable to find the seven excluded signatories in SCORE, the database she was trained to use to verify signatories’ elector statuses. She ran the names, zip codes and addresses in several different combinations, she testified, “even searching one name in reverse order.” The Secretary of State’s Office requires designated election officials to invalidate signatures that are not in the database.

“A signer may very well be an elector qualified to sign (Liu’s) petition, but if that signer’s information is not found in the SCORE database in the time that matters, (DePaul) cannot allow that signature to support (Liu’s) petition,” the ruling states.

Six of seven contested signatures were properly excluded, meaning Liu was still three signatures short, according to the court. The court found DePaul mistakenly rejected one signatory, who signed using a common abbreviation.

Former School District 49 board member petitions district to certify her on November ballot

“Her methods were largely corroborated under cross-examination,” the ruling states. “Other than (one signature), if the Seven Signatories are qualified electors, then fault for their exclusion from (Liu’s) petition lies with the signer, the circulator, the database, or the training. (DePaul) has a responsibility, not only to her office, but to the other candidates to review the petition signatures consistently. An additional elector … does not get (Liu) onto the ballot.”

Liu said she still questions whether those six names are not in SCORE because the database is not publicly accessible to verify.

“I have to accept their word that my signers are not in the SCORE database, because we still don’t have access to it and do not get to see the evidence. That’s it. I was set up from the start. It is my fault that I didn’t pad my signatures by a whole bunch,” Liu wrote in a statement. “But then they would have used something else against me.”