Harris County, Texas filed a lawsuit on Thursday to block a new state law overhauling its election administration, County Attorney Christian Menefee said.
The lawsuit challenges a new state law that would eliminate the office of the county elections administrator, which was created in 2020, and transfer the management of elections to two local elected officials, the county tax assessor and the county clerk. The county elections administrator is a nonpartisan official appointed by the four county commissioners, three of whom are Democrats.
The filing asks the court to temporarily block the law before it goes into effect on September 1 and allow the county elections administrator to continue overseeing elections and voter registration.
Menefee said the law, Senate Bill 1750, violates the Texas Constitution, which prohibits state lawmakers from writing local laws like this.
Transferring oversight to another office so close to early voting would be “chaotic,” he added, noting that an amendment to delay implementation of the law until after the November election had failed in the Legislature.
“The intention here was to blow up our electoral processes,” he said in an interview. “You have to read this bill in conjunction with another bill that they passed, Senate Bill 1933, which effectively says that if the secretary had any problems with this election, that it’s kind of by design given the way they’ve set up this schedule, the secretary of state could come in and implement administrative oversight.”
Senate Bill 1933 was signed into law last month.
Neither bill specifically names Harris County, but instead applies certain provisions to counties with notably large populations — population counts that only Harris County meets.
“Elections for all public offices in Texas, from governor to justice of the peace to city council, are run by county governments,” the lawsuit said, later adding that “this surgical objective of election operations of Harris County was the express intent of the bill. writer, his House patron, and other legislators who supported him.”
in a cheepSen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican who represents part of Harris County and author of both laws, called the lawsuit “frivolous” and said that abolishing the election administrator position “is about performance, NOT politics.”
Bettencourt previously served as a tax assessor and collector in Harris County.
“This bill is the result of election fiascoes due to election administrators and other appointed elected officials,” Bettencourt said. “The fact that the first county of Harris named [elections administrator] had to resign over problems in the primary seems to escape mention” in the lawsuit, he added.
Harris County, which includes the city of Houston, was plagued by election problems in last year’s midterm elections: The county’s March 2022 primary was marred by a shortage of poll workers and issues with machinery. electoral. Officials were slow to report the results and did not count 10,000 mail-in ballots on Election Day. The electoral administrator, Isabel Longoria, resigned.
In November, with a new election chief, Clifford Tatum, in office, paper shortages, and late-opening polling places continued to derail electoral operations. Republicans have claimed that criminality and electoral fraud could be at stake.
Menefee said many counties have dealt with electoral issues and said the county’s 2020 election was “fantastic.”
If his legal challenge fails, Menefee said he is concerned Republicans across the country would consider similar legislation to target election administrators in Democratic strongholds in Republican-controlled states.
“You can bet every dollar in your bank account that that playbook will be used across the country,” he said.
