The Texas Legislature is pushing forth a bill that would enable the secretary of state to redo the Harris County election. This is following the 2022 midterm election when many Democratic candidates managed to have good results which many in the GOP have claimed were the result of election mismanagement.
On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Senate passed a bill, which if successful in the state house, is going to give the secretary of state the power to dismiss election results in one of the largest counties in the state. According to the new bill, they would also have the chance to force a new election if there is a “good cause.” This would mean that they needed to have a reasonable belief that 2 percent of polling places did not have sufficient ballots during voting hours, causing them to run out.
The bill specifically targets counties with a population of more than 2.7 million, which is effectively a way of them specifically targeting Harris County, which over the past few years is becoming increasingly Democratic.
The Harris County Republican Party filed a lawsuit against the county and Clifford Tatum, its election administrator, after the 2022 midterm elections, calling for the elections to be redone. They further pointed out that during the midterms a legal battle examined whether voting hours at Harris County needed to be extended as many locations experienced issues that stopped people from voting, including ballot shortages.
Republican state Sen. Mayes Middleton, a co-sponsor of the bill, has stated that this bill would fix the “systemic ballot paper denial.”
