Jen Rice , Staff writer May 17, 2023 Updated: May 17, 2023 7:45 p.m. Comments
The bill abolishing the Harris County elections administrator position, authored by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, already has made its way through the full Senate and a House committee. With the legislative session entering its final days, the measure could be approved by the House, then sent to the governor's desk.
If Senate Bill 1750 is signed into law, the duties for overseeing elections in Harris County would revert back to two elected officials, the county clerk and the tax assessor-collector, who ran elections until Commissioners Court voted in 2020 to create an elections administrator's office. The administrator is appointed by a five-member commission that includes the county judge, the tax assessor, the county clerk and the chairs of the Harris County Republican and Democratic parties.
Sen. Paul Bettencourt, shown here during a legislative hearing, has filed a bill to eliminate Harris County's elections administrator position. The bill, which has passed the Texas Senate, would be a rare, if not unprecedented, move to target a single position in one county without that county's consent.
More than half of Texas' 254 counties have appointed elections administrators, including several of the most populous, such as Bexar, Tarrant, Dallas and Collin.
SB1750 would apply to counties with a population over 3.5 million. Harris County is the only county with that many people.
It would not be the first time the Legislature has voted to eliminate a position in just one county.
Lawmakers could approve a measure this session abolishing the county treasurer's office in Galveston County, as it has done for several other counties, including Bexar and Tarrant. Galveston County residents have expressed support for the proposal — in fact, County Treasurer Hank Dugie was elected in November on the platform of eliminating the position.
If the Legislature eliminates the job, the final decision still will be up to voters, who would have to approve the measure in a statewide and a local election because the office of treasurer is prescribed in the state constitution.
"The Legislature previously has proposed constitutional amendments to abolish an office in certain counties, but in each situation the voters ultimately decided the issue," said Jody Seaborn, a spokesperson with the Texas Association of Counties.
Abolishing the Harris County elections administrator would be a different story, as the Legislature would be eliminating the position without voter approval or the consent of the county officials who created it.
"I'm hesitant to say it has never happened before, but we don't know of a previous case in which the Legislature directly abolished a county position in a particular county," Seaborn said.
While SB1750 is restricted to Harris County, it could have statewide implications, according to Emily Eby French, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project.
"If SB1750 goes through without much fuss and the state is able to remove an official in Harris County without much pushback from Harris County, what would stop them from doing it again with other officials they don't like in Harris County? Or in Travis, or in Dallas?" French said.
The Legislature has targeted Harris County election practices in the past, including a 2021 law that banned drive-thru voting and 24-hour voting, methods employed during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic to improve access to voters adhering to social distancing efforts.
SB1750, however, is a different approach.
"This is the only time I've seen the state go after one specific person's job in one specific county," French said.
Harris County Republican Party chair Cindy Siegel, who is on the county election commission, issued a statement saying the party supports the bill.
"Voters deserve to have the opportunity to hold the person who runs our elections accountable, and this bill allows just that by returning the responsibility of running elections to an elected official instead of a partisan appointee," Siegel said.
The move does not reflect the will of the voters, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said in a statement.
"It’s not common practice for the Texas Legislature to unsolicitedly abolish a county position in only a single county," he said. "Voters in each of Texas’ 254 counties elect county officials to manage county business, including running elections. State leaders in Austin should honor the will of the voters, not eliminate county positions in a piecemeal fashion based on their personal political vendettas."
Bettencourt said the reason for abolishing the position is performance, not politics.
"In Harris County, elections were running far better under elected officials, the county clerk and the tax assessor, than they were under this appointed elections administrator," Bettencourt said.
Isabel Longoria, the first person appointed to lead the Harris County elections office, resigned in March 2022, days after she and her office came under fire for a slow vote count for the Republican and Democratic primaries and the failure to include about 10,000 ballots in its Election Night tally. Those ballots were included in the final count.
The second elections administrator, Cliff Tatum, who currently holds the job, has faced extensive scrutiny after around 20 polling places ran out of ballot paper on Election Day last November, some for just 15 minutes and others for up to three hours. The shortage impacted a tiny fraction of the 782 polling places across the sprawling county that day but has sparked lawsuits from losing Republican candidates challenging the results.
Because Harris County uses a countywide voting system, which allows voters turned away from one location to go to another polling place to cast their ballots, it is impossible to know if or how many voters were unable to vote because of the paper shortage.
The shortage was not the county's only issue on Election Day; a state district judge ordered the county's polls to stay open an additional hour after some voting locations opened late because of equipment failures.
A judge issued a similar order keeping polls open an hour later in 2018, when elections were run by former County Clerk Stan Stanart, a Republican.
French said Harris County has proved itself willing to remove an elections administrator when necessary.
"There are already provisions in Chapter 87 of the Local Government Code for a county to remove their own official if they think they're not doing a good job," French said. "For the state to come in and do it for them is a massive overreach."
Trudy Hancock, Brazos County elections administrator and president of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators, said state law already allows the removal of an elections administrator on a four-fifths vote of the county election commission and approval by Commissioners Court.
"So, I would think that body in itself should be the one that makes that decision," Hancock said.
Hancock said elections administrators in other parts of the state are concerned about SB1750 and other measures currently under consideration.
"TAEA has taken a really hard stance this year trying to persuade the Legislature to look more at education to mitigate some of the problems, some of the mistakes that are made," Hancock said. "There's been a really big turnover in elections administrators in the last several years, and that trend only seems to continue."
In fact, rather than improving performance, legislation this session could harm the relationship between state and local election officials, Hancock said.
Bettencourt said the measure could apply to other counties in the future.
"I would hope that this type of performance never occurs in another county," Bettencourt said. "But if it does, then I think the state is capable of coming in and taking the action."
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