After repeated irregularities, Texas to oversee November election in Harris County

Ongoing problems identified in the administration of elections in Harris County, the largest county in Texas, are enough to warrant state intervention, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson says.

After Harris County election administrators acted “in defiance of state law,” Nelson said she determined an “enhanced presence by the Secretary’s office” was necessary for the November 2024 election.

As a result, SOS Elections Division staff will assist Harris County officials “for the duration of the election period from early voting, to Election Day, and through tabulation.”

Nelson released the findings of audits on Monday that her office conducted in four counties for the 2021-2022 election cycle. They were conducted in compliance with state law that requires four counties’ election processes to be randomly audited according to population size.

Cameron, Eastland, Guadalupe and Harris counties were audited; their reports are available on the SOS website. Officials in Cameron, Eastland and Guadalupe counties were commended for the processes they put in place and are in compliance with state law, according to the SOS.

The audits were released after Nelson sent warnings and guidances to local election officials and after Gov. Greg Abbott announced more than 1.1 million people were removed from Texas’ voter rolls.

“Texas’ audit process provides accountability and insight into how elections are conducted on a county level to ensure the integrity of our elections,” Nelson said. “While each audit is specific to a county, they include lessons for election officials across the state and offer voters the reassurance that our state’s election processes are thoroughly reviewed.”

Harris County officials were the only ones in the four audits to receive a rebuke.

“In defiance of state law, Harris County failed to estimate and issue the required amount of ballot paper resulting in interruptions in voting in at least 19 polling locations in the November 2022 Election,” the 108-page audit report states. Harris County officials also “failed to properly train its election workers to operate new voting equipment, resulting in widespread voting equipment failures in multiple elections. … In numerous elections, required paperwork from polling locations was incomplete and failed to meet the requirements outlined in law.”

The report notes that Harris County officials also didn’t follow state law to properly maintain its voter rolls and “failed to keep an accurate list of registered voters in their county records.” Maintaining the list in county records has since been addressed and corrected, according to the report.

After multiple widespread election administration failures in the 2022 elections, the Attorney General’s Office issued demands of county officials, several groups sued to block what they argued were illegal voting policies, and in 2023 the Texas legislature passed election reform measures. Abbott signed two bills into law that directly impacted Harris County, forcing it to revert back to a previous process that had been used to administer its elections. The county filed lawsuits to block the laws from going into effect, which all failed.

The laws were enacted after the Democratic county judge and commissioners created a new elections administrator position and office to replace two offices that for years oversaw election administration. The Office of the Tax Assessor-Collector oversaw voter registration duties and the County Clerk’s office handled election administration duties.

Under the first election’s administrator, Isabel Longoria, more than 10,000 ballots were lost and not counted in the March 2022 primary election, prompting lawsuits and forcing her to resign. Under the second administrator, Clifford Tatum, 19 judges lost their races and sued, citing multiple irregularities in their districts. After the county spent more than $50 million on election equipment and processes, multiple precincts reported not having enough ballots, election sites weren’t open, voters were turned away, among other issues, The Center Square reported.

The new law eliminated the Elections Administration position and office. Despite this change, the extent of issues identified in SOS audits of Harris County elections administration necessitate “that an enhanced presence by the Secretary’s office is necessary for the November 2024 election,” Nelson said.

To ensure irregularities don’t occur, SOS state inspectors have been assigned to Harris County “to perform checks on election records, including tapes and chain-of-custody, and will observe the handling and counting of ballots and electronic media during the November 2024 election period.”

SOS Elections Division staff will be in the county “for the duration of the election period from early voting, to Election Day, and through tabulation.”

This is after SOS inspectors were sent to the county in 2022 after numerous voting irregularities were reported and the SOS began auditing the county’s 2020 election procedures, The Center Square reported.

The latest preliminary audit of the county’s election process was released prior to the November 2023 Constitutional Amendment Election. It brought attention “to alarming issues with elections administration that needed to be addressed immediately,” Nelson said.