Among the bills lawmakers passed during the regular session are a measure that will abolish the Harris County Elections Administrator’s Office and another that will allow the Texas Secretary of State to impose “administrative oversight” of the county’s elections.
Republican state lawmakers filed well over a dozen bills during the regular session of the Texas Legislature to, in their words, improve election integrity. Among the most significant ones that passed were two that targeted Harris County, the state's largest Democratic stronghold.
Harris County has struggled to conduct elections in recent years. Election Day 2022 was more of the same. Some polls in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods opened hours late. Others experienced malfunctioning machines. And then there were more than two dozen polling sites in Republican-leaning neighborhoods that were forced to temporarily shut down because they ran out of paper ballots.