HOUSTON — Across Harris County, an rising Democratic stronghold in reliably crimson Texas, roadside indicators posted final November urged harried drivers to vote Republican. A celeb furnishings salesman, beloved by many Houstonians, reduce advertisements with the Republican candidate for the highest county administrator’s submit.
The 2022 races for native judges and county leaders have been among the many hardest fought and most costly but seen within the sprawling county of 4.8 million, which incorporates Houston, as Republicans appeared to capitalize on crime issues to make headway within the state’s largest city space.
But they fell quick.
Now, the county is within the cross hairs of the Republican-dominated state Legislature, which is making an attempt to exert extra management over voting there. Lawmakers are pushing dozens of recent election payments, together with limits on polling locations, felony penalties for unlawful voting and a mechanism for the state to order new elections when voting issues happen in Texas counties with greater than 2.7 million folks, a class that features solely Harris County.
At the identical time, greater than a dozen election challenges have been filed by dropping Republican candidates within the county who’ve argued that important issues at a restricted variety of polling locations on Election Day, together with inadequate provides of poll paper, have been sufficient change the outcomes of races. While native leaders acknowledge points, proof has not been introduced that they affected the outcomes.
Still, the two-front combat, each within the courts and within the State Capitol, highlighted simply how essential it’s for Republicans to maintain Harris County in play and never let it turn out to be one other strongly blue city heart alongside the traces of Austin or Dallas. As lately as 2014, the social gathering managed the county, whose Republican high official was re-elected in a landslide. But it has been transferring left ever since.
“I tell people, we could be the reason we lose Texas, just because of our size,” stated Cindy Siegel, the chair of the county Republican Party, sitting in her workplace underneath a portray of George W. Bush with smoke rising from Lower Manhattan after Sept. 11, 2001.
“We’re the wall,” she added. “And they say, so goes Texas, so goes the country. So Harris County is the battleground.”
Republican lawmakers in Texas handed an overhaul of election guidelines simply two years in the past in a bitter combat with Democrats. They returned to the topic this session largely to handle the ends in Harris County in November.
The election there supplied a contentious backdrop as a result of there have been actual points in the course of the vote. Some polling locations opened late, whereas others struggled with sufficient paper to accommodate the two-sheet poll printouts wanted for the county’s big listing of races. The native district lawyer, a Democrat, opened an investigation final yr.
“The legislative push is to make sure that this never happens in any county in Texas,” stated Senator Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican and the sponsor of a number of of the payments. “I believe the lack of ballot paper is voter suppression.”
But county officers stated the election payments don’t handle the problems that arose in Harris County. Instead, they stated, the proposed legal guidelines might dampen turnout by limiting voting choices and would give a partisan secretary of state, an official appointed by the governor, the facility to overturn outcomes and order a brand new vote if poll paper points arose once more.
Christian Menefee, the Harris County lawyer, stated the election challenges appeared to attempt to lay the groundwork for giving Republicans extra management over the elections in a Democratic county. “It is a solution in search of a problem that’s not widespread,” he stated.
“As a Black man whose grandfather paid a poll tax, this whole ordeal is infuriating,” stated Mr. Menefee, a Democrat. “It’s a complete misuse of the word disenfranchisement from people who, by the way, are still working to disenfranchise folks.”
The scale of the issues on Election Day — which featured new voting machines and a prolonged poll that required two pages of paper per voter — stay a matter of dispute, each in courtroom and earlier than the Legislature. But they don’t seem to have affected the overwhelming majority of the county’s 782 polling areas.
At a listening to earlier than a State House committee in March, the top of the secretary of state’s elections division stated that regardless of logistical issues, the 2022 election “was one of the best elections we’ve seen” in a number of years in Harris County, although he acknowledged it was a low bar given the roundly criticized major election earlier within the yr.
Republicans have stated the November outcomes have been certainly affected as a result of, they’ve argued, the poll points arose in precincts the place their voters prove in massive numbers. Democratic county officers have stated the issues occurred in different areas as properly and have been restricted in scope: A postelection report by the election administrator, Clifford Tatum, discovered that 68 polling locations reported operating out of paper on Election Day, and 61 stated they later acquired extra paper.
County officers have resisted releasing paperwork and different details about the dealing with of voting points on Election Day in response to public info requests, citing the continued litigation. Among Senator Bettencourt’s election payments is one that may take away the “litigation exception” for requests for sure election data.
With that backdrop, the State Senate has superior greater than a dozen election payments, explicitly or implicitly aimed toward Harris County, an space bigger than the state of Rhode Island that features not solely the reliably Democratic metropolis of Houston but additionally a few of its extra average suburbs.
The county since 2016 has shifted ever extra firmly into the Democratic column in presidential races and native ones as properly, as previously conservative neighborhoods and rising Houston suburbs have grown extra numerous and trended blue. The political make-up of the five-member commissioners courtroom, which administers the county, has gone from a three-two Republican majority in 2014 to a four-one Democratic majority now.
Republicans are hoping, if to not reverse that development, then not less than to preserve the contests shut and, generally, winnable.
“The Texas Legislature will ensure that there are consequences for Harris County’s failure to run elections,” stated Senator Mayes Middleton, a Houston-area Republican and the sponsor of the invoice to permit the secretary of state to order new elections in sure circumstances of poll paper issues. “Disenfranchising voters is unacceptable,” Mr. Middletown stated, in a press release.
Also of concern to Democrats and advocates of increasing entry to the polls is one other invoice, which handed the State Senate final month, that may restrict voters to their assigned polling place. Some counties, together with Harris County, at present permit voters to solid a poll wherever within the county.
“It’s definitely one of the most damaging,” stated Katya Ehresman, the voting rights program supervisor on the advocacy group Common Cause Texas, as a result of by limiting voters’ choices it might lower turnout. The invoice, like others which have made it by means of the Senate, should nonetheless move the extra average, Republican-controlled State House.
In the final election, voters whose polling locations ran out of paper have been capable of go to a different location within the county, although some gave up with out voting.
Many of the authorized challenges to the November election in Harris County contain voters who have been unable to solid ballots.
Leila Perrin stated she had gone to vote in a extra conservative part of West Houston shortly earlier than the polls closed on Election Day and encountered a chaotic scene. “I went to get out of my car, and these people were leaving and they said, ‘Don’t bother,’” she recalled. “I said ‘Why?’ And they said, ‘They don’t have any paper ballots.’”
Ms. Perrin, 72, had deliberate to vote towards the highest county official, the Democratic county decide Lina Hidalgo. So she drove to a different polling website close by and located the identical scenario. By then it was 10 minutes earlier than the polls closed. “So I just went home. I was furious,” she stated.
Twenty-one Republican candidates have filed election challenges together with Ms. Perrin’s favored candidate, Alexandra del Moral Mealer, who misplaced to Ms. Hidalgo by 18,000 votes. The first trial is ready to start in June.
Some voters additionally discovered themselves unable to vote in predominantly Democratic precincts briefly on Election Day, although no Democratic candidates have filed challenges. For instance, voters have been turned away from one such location that didn’t open for hours. All polls within the county have been ordered to remain open an additional hour underneath an emergency courtroom order, however then voting was halted by the Texas Supreme Court after an enchantment from the Republican lawyer common.
“Issues don’t mean conspiracies,” stated Representative John Bucy, a Democratic member of the Texas House elections committee. “Our elections are run effectively in the state of Texas. Nothing is perfect, but they’re effective.”
At a listening to of the elections committee final month, an election decide in Harris County stated he had run out of paper by 6 p.m. on Election Day regardless of flagging the difficulty a number of instances in the course of the day.
“We had about 40 people in line, most of whom left to find another polling place,” stated the decide, Christopher Russo. Those who stayed would be capable to vote, he stated he informed them, however he couldn’t assure how lengthy it might take to get the paper.
“I finally received ballot paper at 9:05 p.m.,” he stated. By that point, solely 4 folks remained in line.
Source: www.nytimes.com