Harris County election missteps fuel GOP lawsuit, calls for investigation

Sign up for The Brief, our day by day publication that retains readers up to the mark on essentially the most important Texas news.

Harris County’s election officers are once more going through criticism and calls for elevated scrutiny — this time together with from the state’s Republican management — over Election Day points because the county continues to grapple with working an environment friendly election in a county as giant as some states.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday referred to as for an investigation into issues voters encountered on Election Day final week, pointing to late polling place openings, paper poll shortages and staffing points. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick backed that call, as did a number of residents who voiced their considerations throughout a Harris County Commissioner Court assembly Tuesday.

The county’s election administrator has admitted some shortcomings and promised a full evaluation as soon as staff wrap up their vote-counting duties. The county has made missteps in a number of current elections, however the conflict can also be the most recent entry in a protracted collection of political battles over how the state’s most populous county runs its elections that ramped up in recent times after Republicans misplaced management of the county.

“The allegations of election improprieties in our state’s largest county may result from anything ranging from malfeasance to blatant criminal conduct,” Abbott stated in an announcement Monday. “Voters in Harris County deserve to know what happened. Integrity in the election process is essential. To achieve that standard, a thorough investigation is warranted.”

The governor referred to as for the involvement of the secretary of state, legal professional normal and the Texas Rangers in investigating “allegations of improprieties in the way that the 2022 elections were conducted in Harris County.” Though the governor raised the specter of criminality, he provided no particular allegations of felony conduct within the election, neither is there proof of widespread fraud.

Last Tuesday, voting in Harris County was prolonged by court docket order for an additional hour after a couple of dozen polling locations have been delayed in opening. County elections administrator Clifford Tatum has additionally acknowledged points with inadequate paper ballots at some polling locations, although he stated election workers was dispatched to ship extra ballots, in addition to situations during which technicians appeared to fail to answer technical points within the subject.

While election staff are nonetheless processing provisional ballots, Tatum stated his workplace was within the means of contacting every election decide, who oversee polling locations, to tell a post-election report that can present extra element on the scope of election day points — and the extra sources which may be wanted to make sure the county’s 782 polling places might be correctly run.

“We are a transparent organization. There is nothing for us to hide,” Tatum instructed county commissioners on Tuesday. “We have an election plan. We followed the plan. Some of the plan didn’t go as anticipated. We will review what did not work, we’ll build upon the things that did not work well and we will correct the things that didn’t work well.”

The normal election was the primary contest overseen by Tatum, who has been on the job for only some months after changing former elections administrator Isabel Longoria. Longoria submitted her resignation inside days of the March major amid stress from each political events over slow vote counting related to the county’s switch to new voting machines and its failure to incorporate 10,000 ballots in its election night time returns.

The fumbles prompted a lawsuit by the Harris County GOP, which this week once more sued the county and Tatum arguing it violated varied provisions of the Texas Election Code. The get together’s allegations embody paper shortages that disenfranchised voters and the improper dealing with of spoiled ballots and situations during which a voter’s two-page poll couldn’t be adequately scanned.

Harris County not too long ago switched to new voting machines, changing a number of the oldest machines within the state and aligning the county with new state guidelines requiring counties to make use of machines that go away a paper path.

Those machines require voters to make their alternatives on an digital gadget earlier than feeding a printed model of their poll right into a scanner to solid their vote. The poll is so prolonged in Harris that it requires two printed ballots per voter. Quite a lot of voters have confronted scanning points whereas utilizing the brand new machines, together with within the major when election staff needed to evaluation greater than 1,500 ballots to make sure they have been correctly counted.

On Tuesday, Commissioner Tom Ramsey referred to as for each an audit of the election and a city corridor to gather considerations and points skilled by voters.

“We have a problem in Harris County,” Ramsey stated. “We do not know how to run an election.”

Harris County is already topic to a full post-election audit by the state. The secretary of state’s workplace earlier this 12 months chosen Harris for evaluation as a part of a brand new audit course of put into place by sweeping voting laws Republicans handed final 12 months.

A spokesperson for the company stated it had additionally “received information regarding alleged improprieties” it had referred to the Texas legal professional normal’s workplace and the Harris County district legal professional’s workplace for investigation.

“Simultaneously … we will be collecting even more information to ultimately provide the public with greater clarity on the root causes of the issues witnessed in Harris County on Election Day,” stated Sam Taylor, a spokesperson for the secretary of state, in an announcement.

Under each Republican and Democratic administrations, Harris County elections have lengthy been recognized for gradual reporting of election outcomes. More populous than roughly half of the states, the county is Texas’ greatest and usually has essentially the most votes to course of. Voting supplies, together with poll containers, should even be transported throughout the county’s almost 2,000 sq. miles again to its election headquarters.

The county has additionally usually hosted partisan battles over its elections, together with the creation of an elections administrator workplace and voting initiatives like a transfer to countywide voting that permits voters to solid ballots at any polling place within the county on election day.

Harris was additionally on the heart of sweeping Republican laws handed in 2021 to additional prohibit the state’s voting course of and slender native management of elections. That new regulation, often called Senate Bill 1, banned strategies championed by Harris County within the first main election in the course of the pandemic — 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting — that have been disproportionately utilized by voters of colour.

On Tuesday, County Judge Lina Hidalgo — the county’s chief govt — stated it was “important for mistakes to be identified and addressed, for weaknesses to be identified and addressed.” Hidalgo vowed the county would take part within the investigations, however she pushed again on the state’s resolution to “single out” Harris County “for the kind of harassment and political stunt that we’re seeing.”

“There is a process for addressing concerns, and to my knowledge, the process does not involve a press release announcing three different agencies to go into a single county after also announcing two separate audits,” Hidalgo stated.