Natalia Contreras, Votebeat Texas

Harris County has sued to block the law, but unless a judge steps in, the county’s two-year-old elections department — currently headed by Clifford Tatum — will be eliminated on Sept. 1. The office’s duties will revert back to being split between the county clerk and the tax assessor-collector, a historic model for overseeing elections in the state that many counties have moved away from in recent years. Harris County created its elections department in 2020.

The timing of the law means the transition of election duties in the country’s third largest county would happen while election offices across the state are trying to prepare for elections this November and a presidential election in 2024, election administrators told Votebeat.

If one deadline isn’t met, it can have a negative domino effect, said Bruce Sherbet, the elections administrator in Collin County, who warned that each step on the pre-election checklist must be done in sequence for the whole thing to work.

“It’s like trying to juggle 10 balls in the air at one time. It’s very easy for one of them to drop,” Sherbert said. “And that’s when you could have situations where workers aren’t thoroughly trained and then you can have polls opening late or situations like when they’re not sure how to use the equipment.”

The potential for problems looms large in Harris, the state’s most populous county, which has been beset by controversy and stumbles since creating the elections department two years ago.

Tatum, who joined the office less than a year ago, did not respond to Votebeat’s request for comment.

But in a written statement when the law passed in May, Tatum said the “only solution” to the recurring Election Day problems is stability for the elections department. He pointed out that the new law’s effective date would be 39 days before the voter registration deadline and 52 days before the first day of early voting for a countywide election that includes the Houston mayoral race.

“We fear this time frame would not be adequate for such a substantial change in administration, and that Harris County voters and election workers may be the ones to pay the price,” he said.

Harris County sued earlier this month to stop the new law from going into effect. A court hearing has not yet been scheduled.

Election workers in counties across the state work year-round on processing mail-in ballot applications and updating their voter registration lists. In the summer months and up to the first week of early voting this fall, election officials told Votebeat they are also busy working on a lengthy list of key tasks, all of which are time-sensitive and essential;

Jennifer Doinoff, the elections administrator in Hays County, which has 175,000 registered voters, said her staff has been working round the clock to do voter list maintenance and the redistricting of overpopulated precincts ahead of 2024.

Harris County, by comparison, has more than 2.5 million registered voters and last year set up 782 polling locations for them.

“What we’re doing in Hays County to prepare for November and for next year is a huge undertaking. So if it’s a big deal for us, it’s a big deal, but times 100, in Harris County,” said Doinoff.

“A change like that right before a presidential election year can set back an election department that much further,” Doinoff said, referring to the potential elimination of the elections department in Harris.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee made similar points in the lawsuit he filed against the state earlier this month. Menefee argues the law violates the Texas Constitution because it singles out one county. He is asking a district judge to prevent the law from taking effect.

Menefee in his filing says the elimination of the county’s elections department and the transfer of election duties to the county clerk and the tax assessor-collector — only six weeks before the November election — could lead to “not only inefficiencies, office instability, and increased costs to the county, but it will also disrupt an election the Harris County [election administrator] has been planning for months.”

“Without court intervention, the public’s selection of their elected representatives — the core process on which our democracy rests — will be risked in Harris County,” it says.

Harris County’s decision to combine election responsibilities into a single office in 2020 wasn’t out of the ordinary; Texas counties have a well-established right to determine how best to administer their own elections.

In the late 1970s, the Texas Legislature passed a law allowing counties’ commissioners courts, based on their individual needs, to assign election duties to the county clerk and tax assessor-collector — which are elected positions — or to create an elections department and appoint a nonpartisan elections administrator. More than half of the state’s 254 counties, large and small, have since appointed a nonpartisan elections administrator.

Harris, in fact, was one of the last large counties in Texas to create an elections department and appoint an elections administrator. County leaders initially appointed an inexperienced elections administrator, Isabel Longoria, to lead the newly created department, which had also at the time just purchased new voting equipment voters would have to learn to use. Longoria resigned in July 2022, after the department failed to report unofficial primary election vote totals to the state by the deadline required by law.

Tatum, who has years of experience running elections, inherited Longoria’s department with very little time to fix lingering administrative problems when he was appointed to his role in August.

In the November 2022 general election, Harris County had to extend voting for an hour after various polling places experienced problems with voting machines, paper ballot shortages and long waiting times. Losing Republican candidates filed more than 20 lawsuits against the county, citing those problems and seeking a redo of the election. Those are still moving through the court system.

At the time of the 2022 election, Harris County’s elections department lacked a tracking system typically used by large counties to identify issues in real-time, and for months, could not say how many polling locations ran out of paper on Election Day or whether anyone was prevented from voting. The Houston Chronicle subsequently reported that out of the more than 782 polling locations, only about 20 ran out of paper.

In an assessment of the November election released in January, Tatum detailed proposed actions to improve the operations of elections in Harris County, including obtaining the election tools necessary to track and resolve issues at the polls in real-time — such a system was in place for the May election. Tatum also suggested having a review of the processes for opening polling sites, setting up voting systems and updating their software. As well as hiring additional full-time staff for the elections department and obtaining “sustained and dedicated administrative funding.”

Nadia Hakim, the Harris County elections department spokesperson, did not answer Votebeat’s questions about whether the department has hired additional staff or whether it’s working on its budget needs for next year.

Hakim said the Harris elections office is currently operating normally. “There really is no opportunity to hit pause, so this office will continue to operate business as usual to meet these statutory requirements,” she said, adding that details about what the transition of election duties to the county clerk and tax assessor-collector would look like “remains to be seen.”

Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth, a Democrat, previously worked under former Republican County Clerk Stan Stanart, who ran elections for the county from 2011 to 2018, before the county created the elections administration department. Hudspeth handled voter outreach for the office and later became chief deputy clerk.

Hudspeth and Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Ann Harris Bennett, also a Democrat, whose office would take over the duties of updating the county’s voter rolls, declined to comment on the potential transition. Bennett, too, has experience, having been in charge of the voter rolls for the county from 2017 to 2020.

The new law’s author, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston-based Republican, told Votebeat that he is certain Hudspeth and Bennett are experienced enough to manage the county’s upcoming elections, but it would be “a mistake to wait” for a court order to begin preparations to transfer the duties “There is no other operational reality right now, unless the courts actually intervene,” he said. “And if not, these people are elected and therefore accountable to the public.”

Meanwhile, the instability could make it hard to retain experienced election workers, Sherbet, the Collin County elections administrator, pointed out.

“It can be very volatile if you don’t have enough experienced, capable people to really take on probably the most complex election not just in the state but in the country,” he said.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access in Texas for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Advocates say Abbott’s veto of House Bill 3159 is a blow for voters with disabilities who have for years called for the Legislature to grant them a way to mark their mail-in ballots without having to rely on anyone else.

Co-authored by state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, and state Rep. John H. Bucy III, D-Austin, the bill would have allowed voters who need help casting a ballot, such as people who are visually impaired or are paralyzed, to do so “privately and securely” by requesting an electronic ballot and using a computer to mark their choices. The bill still would have required those voters to print out, sign and return their ballots by mail.

Similar bills had been filed since 2019 without success. This was the first time a bill of its kind made it to the governor’s desk.

In a resolution explaining his veto Saturday, Abbott called the intent of the bill “laudable” but said the bill does not limit the use of an electronic and accessible ballot by mail only to voters with disabilities. He says the bill would allow “any voter who qualifies to vote by mail to receive a ballot electronically.”

But some policy experts and voting rights advocates say Abbott is incorrect.

The bill requires voters who want to vote by mail using the electronically delivered accessible ballot to affirm they “have a sickness or physical condition preventing them from appearing at the polling place on election day without a likelihood of needing personal assistance or injuring [their] health.”

“Greg Abbott either didn’t read this bill closely enough to understand what it really does or is deliberately working to make it harder for Texans with disabilities to vote,” Katya Ehresman, the voting rights program manager for Common Cause Texas, said in a statement.

Leach declined to comment on the veto Tuesday. Bucy described the veto as surprising and disheartening, adding that he and Leach worked through the legislative session to add the kind of restrictions that Abbott now says are missing.

“I think the governor got it wrong, not just on the interpretation of the bill but also just got it wrong on the opportunity to pass some really forward-thinking policy,” he said.

Abbott did sign a bill that improves in-person voting for those with disabilities or mobility problems, allowing them to skip the line at their polling location and requiring polling places to designate more than one parking space for curbside voting.

But advocates who have long fought for more access to mail ballots for voters with disabilities were disappointed and frustrated by his veto of HB 3159, which passed both legislative chambers with strong bipartisan support.

“This is giving people the exact same opportunity and access as anyone else. Everyone else that votes now has the right to a secret ballot, and voters with disabilities, too, should have that right,” Chase Bearden, deputy executive director of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities, told Votebeat. “It is time. We can’t wait until the next session to do this.”

The veto by Abbott, who is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair, also came as a surprise after members of his own Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities spoke in support of the bill in April. The committee, formed by members appointed by Abbott, makes recommendations to the governor and Legislature on disability issues, promotes compliance with disability-related laws and promotes a network of local committees doing similar work, among other duties.

Under current law, voters with disabilities who need help casting a ballot are the only group of voters who, if they wish to vote independently, must do so using an accessible voting machine at a polling location. Current Texas law already restricts who can vote by mail to people who are 65 and older, people with a physical disability, those expecting to give birth three weeks before or after Election Day, people who are away from the county during early voting or on Election Day and people who are in jail but otherwise eligible. The mail-in ballots have to be marked, signed and returned by mail or in person.

Conservative activists opposed the bill, saying they feared it would lead to mail ballot fraud, although there’s no evidence to support that. Others who submitted public comments online said the bill was “a trojan horse bill that will open up remote electronic voting.” Some of the same people who opposed the bill during legislative debate also called on Abbott to veto it.

A revival of the bill is unlikely, said Daniel Griffith, senior policy director at Secure Democracy USA. Abbott himself would have to call the Legislature into a special session on the issue to do so.

Griffith said the bill’s restrictive language is why it garnered enough bipartisan support to make it through the legislative process. It’s unclear whether Abbott expressed his concerns to Leach or Bucy ahead of his veto.

“Given that clearly this was the result of bipartisan compromise, I’m sure that the authors and the various sponsors of the bill would definitely have listened and been responsive to anything the governor might have had to say,” Griffith said.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Tarrant County officials are considering hiring as election chief a prominent Republican donor and activist who has baselessly criticized the security of the county’s elections and appears to have no previous experience running an election.

Karen Wiseman and two other applicants — Clinton Ludwig, the county clerk’s chief deputy since 2017, and Fred Crosley, the former chief financial officer of the county’s public transit service, Trinity Metro — are finalists for the job. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram first reported the finalists’ names Tuesday.

The county received at least 20 applications for the position through its online recruitment portal after elections administrator Heider Garcia submitted his resignation in April.

Garcia, known as one of the most respected elections directors in the state, said in his letter of resignation he was leaving due to political pressure from his new boss, conservative Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare. Since former President Donald Trump began to make baseless allegations of fraud in connection with the outcome of the 2020 election, Tarrant County — the state’s largest swing county — has been at the center of unfounded election fraud conspiracies.

In a text message to Votebeat, Garcia said county officials’ selection of a heavily partisan finalist for the job such as Wiseman — who, like O’Hare, has been a top Tarrant County GOP donor — did not surprise him.

Garcia said such politically motivated decisions are what drove him to resign. There’s “an expectation that the [elections administrator] will play politics,” he said and added that he hopes there are “enough reasonable members of the Elections Commission that will not vote” for a partisan candidate, given that the job is meant to be nonpartisan.

Wiseman did not respond to Votebeat’s multiple requests for comment.

The county’s election commission — which is made up of O’Hare; the chairs of both county political parties, GOP chair Rick Barnes and Democratic Party chair Allison Campolo; the county’s tax assessor; and the county clerk — is responsible for making the hire and has been reviewing resumes and conducting interviews for the role for about a week. Campolo told Votebeat the process will likely wrap up in about two weeks but declined to comment further for this story. Barnes did not respond to a request for comment.

Based on a review of their online resumes, the finalists for the county’s top elections job appear to have no previous experience running elections, either in Texas or anywhere else. Wiseman’s resume shows she has previous experience in finance and so does Crosley’s. Ludwig appears to have experience managing administrative teams.

Wiseman has been active in the county’s elections as an election judge — people appointed by a political party to supervise a polling location — and most recently as a poll watcher, which has allowed her to quietly spend time observing activities at polling locations and be present in the room where votes are counted on election night as part of a Tarrant County right-wing group that has been searching for instances of voter fraud.

Her selection as a finalist also comes after O’Hare, who ran on a campaign prioritizing “election integrity,” said he would not rule out hiring someone who has questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results. O’Hare did not respond to questions from Votebeat about why Wiseman is being considered for the job and whether any of the finalists have the experience necessary to run elections in a county with more than 1 million registered voters.

The group Wiseman has been associated with, Citizens for Election Integrity, has since 2021 publicly questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in Tarrant County and, without evidence, accused Garcia of “rigging” elections since he took the position in 2018.

Led by Fort Worth lawyers Dan Bates and Bill Fearer, the group has spread election conspiracy theories, including false claims that the county’s voting machines are connected to the internet and that people’s votes can be manipulated. The group, along with others across the country that have spread falsehoods about election administration, opposes the use of modern technology to run elections.

A day after Garcia’s resignation in April, during a Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting, Wiseman spoke against the county’s vote to renew a contract with the vendor of software the elections department uses to run its electronic poll books. The electronic poll books have voter registration information and help poll workers quickly check in voters at polling locations, which also prevents them from voting at more than one location. The electronic poll books are not used to count votes. The software has been certified by the Texas secretary of state, but Wiseman alleged it was “easily hackable” and had “plug-ins that can manipulate election data.” Wiseman did not offer evidence to back up her claims.

And since Garcia resigned, she said, “should the new elections administrator be allowed to review and select their own program?”

Citizens for Election Integrity has also questioned residents at addresses pulled from voter rolls. Wiseman herself sent letters to voters asking them why they voted outside of their neighborhood. Voters in Tarrant County can legally vote at any polling site. Last year, Wiseman was also involved in the group’s review of thousands of physical ballots of the 2020 primary election in search of unspecified irregularities.

Bates, the group’s head counsel, also represented Wiseman in a lawsuit she filed last summer against Tarrant County and Garcia in an effort to obtain election records related to several past elections, which were at the time not yet public by law. Wiseman sought a long list of things, including “all early voting, absentee, provisional, and day-of-election paper ballots; all cast vote record (CVR) electronic data for all voting methods (absentee, early, and day of voting); all provisional ballots/votes, regardless of whether they were included in final vote counts or not; absentee ballot envelopes; and all paper ballots that were re-created by the ballot board of election workers for any reason.”

A Tarrant County district judge in May ordered the county to produce the information for Wiseman.

Some county officials say they’ve had concerns about who will be appointed as the next elections administrator since Garcia’s resignation over political pressures.

Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks, a Democrat, declined to comment on Wiseman’s qualifications for the job but said he’s had concerns about the hiring process from the beginning.

“The process to replace [Garcia] is not going to give us the quality of the elections administrator that we lost,” Brooks said.

Garcia was particularly lauded by election officials across the country for his engagement with “election deniers” in his county, said Paul Gronke, Elections and Voting Information Center director and a professor of political science at Reed College.

“It is no simple task to administer elections in a large and diverse county like Tarrant, especially as we rapidly approach what is sure to be a highly competitive presidential election,” Gronke, who leads an annual survey of local election officials across the country, a source of data on the profession, said in a statement to Votebeat. “I sincerely hope that a new administrator is found who has the same level of expertise, respect, and ability to reach across political divides as Heider Garcia.”

In a tweet Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, said the fact that Wiseman got far enough in the hiring process to be a finalist is “disgusting.” Last month, Veasey and other Tarrant County Democrats asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate O’Hare and other county GOP officials’ actions and to end a “pattern of voter intimidation and harassment.” The Democrats’ request came after Garcia’s resignation and pointed to the county’s creation of an election integrity “task force” supported by O’Hare.

“They getting too comfortable in Tarrant County govt,” Veasey wrote in his tweet.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

An unprecedented mandate the Legislature passed in 2021, without fully realizing its consequences, would have decertified equipment that counties currently use to count votes, to be replaced by machines on which data “once written, cannot be modified,” at an estimated cost of more than $100 million.

The bill amending the requirement is now headed to the governor’s desk. It will allow counties to use the equipment they already have.

The initial measure, aimed at preventing the tampering of vote data, passed in 2021 on a voice vote without debate, largely unnoticed, tucked into the sweeping voting law Senate Bill 1.

In February, Votebeat reported on the problems with the mandate and election officials’ growing concerns. This year’s legislative session was the best opportunity to amend the proposal before it took effect for the 2026 elections.

In March, state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican, and other lawmakers filed legislation to amend the law, which, according to the secretary of state’s office, would have also required the purchase of new equipment for each election.

Hughes’ proposal to amend the provision — Senate Bill 1661 — was approved unanimously by both chambers. During a Senate committee hearing in March, Hughes said that there had been a “misunderstanding on the scope” of the provision, though he didn’t elaborate.

In April, during a Zoom call with members of the Texas Republican Party, Hughes — who did not respond to Votebeat’s multiple requests for comment — said “the media interpreted” the provision in Senate Bill 1 “as needing to replace equipment each election, and spending millions.”

”That’s silly, that’s not what the law says,” Hughes said. But election administration experts and county and state officials said that indeed the law would require a total replacement of equipment at a cost of millions of dollars. Hughes himself sponsored the legislation to change that.

When Hughes’ new bill goes into effect Sept. 1, county election departments will be able to continue to use the voting equipment they have without any additional costs to counties or taxpayers.

Election administrators who tried to sound the alarm on the problem without success in 2021 are relieved.

“It’s nice that, you know, the powers that be finally listened to what we’ve been saying all along on that issue,” said Chris Davis, who is the Williamson County elections administrator and a member of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators. The organization mobilized and reached out to lawmakers to make them aware of the provision’s implications. And, Davis said, Votebeat’s reporting also fueled the urgency that led to the corrective legislation.

“That article lit a fire under people’s butts, along with our concerns and complaints,” Davis said. “The biggest part of our outreach to lawmakers was our list of legislative priorities that we sent to them, our invited testimony in the House. And your coverage, that was a big part of it.”

When Sen. Bob Hall, supported by Hughes, first proposed the requirement in 2021, both legislators said it would prevent “cheating” and the “manipulation” of vote data stored in USB flash drives and taken from polling places to central counting stations — although there’s no evidence any such thing has ever happened.

The law prohibited counties from using reusable storage devices, such as the USB flash drives, which are certified by the secretary of state. The “once written, cannot be modified” requirement also prohibits the use of equipment such as ballot scanners and tabulating machines, all now used to count votes. The technology the law required, known as “write once, read many,” or WORM devices, generally refers to CD or DVD drives and the discs they burn data onto.

Votebeat reported that in order to fully comply, counties would have to buy entirely new voting systems for each election, since the whole point is that the equipment can’t be reused. The secretary of state’s office estimated that it would cost taxpayers more than $116 million to replace the eliminated equipment, plus an ongoing cost of more than $37 million every two years, since new equipment would have to be purchased for each election. And that’s only if counties could have found such equipment. Voting equipment that would match the requirements does not appear to have been invented by any election equipment company operating in the United States.

Hughes’ bill amending the provision requires that counties use storage devices, such as the secretary of state-certified USB flash drives, that, if manipulated or tampered with, would become unreadable once they’re entered into the tabulating machines used to count votes. This is equipment counties already have.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

The bills targeting Harris, which would eliminate its chief elections official and allow state officials to intervene and supervise the county’s elections in response to administrative complaints, are headed to the governor’s desk.

Lawmakers say they’re responding to repeated election issues in Harris County, which includes the city of Houston. The county, for its part, has signaled it will challenge the bid to remove its elections administrator and is portraying the bills as a partisan power grab and the latest in a series of legislative moves by Texas Republicans to tighten access to the ballot in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

Some election and policy experts say the moves set a bad precedent, mirror strategies recently used by GOP-led legislatures in Florida and Georgia to gain control of local elections, and could signal state lawmakers’ intention to seek control in counties beyond Harris. The continual changes to elections administration in Texas, which intensified in 2021 with the sweeping voting bill Senate Bill 1, could also foster public distrust, said Daniel Griffith, senior policy director at Secure Democracy USA.

“Election administration should really be something that’s stable and something that people can rely on,” Griffith said.

Instead, the bills represent the latest battle in the partisan war over how elections should be run in Texas, and who should oversee them.

Senate Bill 1933, authored by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Harris County Republican, grants the Texas secretary of state the authority to investigate election “irregularities” after complaints are filed — but only in counties with more than 4 million people, which means just Harris County.

The office, which until now has had less authority than nearly any other state’s chief election authority, will be able to remove a county election administrator or to file a petition to remove an elected county officer overseeing elections, such as a county clerk, if “a recurring pattern of problems” isn’t resolved.

After the measure goes into effect in September, administrative election complaints that are filed with the secretary of state’s Elections Division, led by Christina Adkins, can trigger an investigation.

Examples of recurring problems that could trigger state oversight include:

State officials must conduct an investigation, but if they find “good cause to believe” there is a “recurring pattern of problems,” Adkins could then order state oversight of Harris County’s elections. The secretary of state’s Elections Division could then have personnel on the ground, observing any activities related to election preparation, early voting, election day, and post-election day procedures.

The state’s oversight can last for up to two years or until the office determines the “recurring pattern of problems” has been resolved.

If such problems aren’t resolved, the secretary of state could then get rid of Harris County election officials, though a second bill passed by Republicans, Senate Bill 1750, could make that more complex. That bill removes Harris County’s elections administrator position, reshaping how the county oversees elections.

That law also goes into effect in September — only months before Harris’ municipal election. It will transfer election duties back to the county clerk and tax assessor-collector’s office. To remove an elected official such as the county clerk, the secretary of state would have to request the removal, but the final decision would be determined through a jury trial.

Last week, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said the county was preparing to sue the state over the new measures.

“The Texas Constitution is clear: The Legislature can’t pass laws that target one specific city or one specific county,” Menefee said.

County Judge Lina Hidalgo tweeted Sunday that legislators in Texas “are still trying to disenfranchise 4.7 million of their own constituents by taking over elections in Harris County. This fight is far from over,” she said. “This is a shameless power grab and dangerous precedent.”

Last November, Harris County had to extend voting for an hour after various polling places had malfunctioning voting machines, paper ballot shortages, and long waiting periods. More than 20 lawsuits from losing Republican candidates have been filed against the county, citing those problems and seeking a redo of the election.

Clifford Tatum, the county’s second elections administrator since the position was created in 2020, was hired only two months before November’s election. At the time, Harris County’s elections department lacked a tracking system used by other large counties to identify issues in real time and for months could not say how many polling locations ran out of paper on Election Day or whether anyone was prevented from voting. A recent investigation by the Houston Chronicle found that out of the more than 782 polling locations, only about 20 ran out of paper.

Bettencourt declared throughout the legislative session that Harris County’s election problems in the past year were the “genesis” of his proposals. Bettencourt has denied the pieces of legislation are political in nature and called the passage of his bills a “victory.” He said in a tweet Sunday that the legislation means “the problems of the defunct Harris County Elections Administrator should be a thing of the past!”

Initially introduced as a measure that would allow the secretary of state to randomly select small counties to conduct election audits, Senate Bill 1933 was amended multiple times during the session as part of a slew of Republican-led measures aimed at scrutinizing and supervising Harris County’s elections.

Weeks later, when the bill made it to the House chamber, it was amended behind closed doors and without any public input until it eventually affected only counties with a population of more than 4 million residents, meaning only Harris County.

Katya Ehresman, voting rights program director with Common Cause Texas, said voters, county officials, and election administrators should have been given the opportunity to testify about legislation set to directly impact them.

Ehresman said that process was concerning and “against values of transparency and public input, which should be core parts of the legislative process.”

Another state election oversight bill proposed by Bettencourt died in the House after it didn’t meet key deadlines. Senate Bill 1039 would have allowed the secretary of state, following a complaint of election “irregularities,” to appoint a conservator to oversee elections in a county when violations of the Election Code were identified.

On Monday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick sent a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott asking him to consider potentially reviving SB 1039 in a special session in the coming months.

Griffith said if that bill is revived, it could be a way for the Legislature to exert election oversight over all counties instead of just in Harris.

Voting rights activists say the approved bills could threaten Texas counties’ ability to maintain a nonpartisan election process.

“These bills do have a tangible effect on voter turnout, voter apathy, and on the ability for elections administrators to do their job free from threats and free from partisan pressures,” Ehresman said. “The discourse surrounding Texas election reform continues to be punitive and continues to be rooted in misinformation. And that will have a permanent damage on recruitment [of election workers] and election administration going forward.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

The news was announced suddenly during a Texas House Elections Committee meeting Thursday morning as the committee heard public testimony on one of about a dozen bills that would give the state more oversight of elections. At the podium, Harris County Republican Party Chair Cindy Siegel stumbled over her words and apologized to the committee. “I just heard about Alan, so I am upset,” Siegel said.

Committee Chair Reggie Smith, a Republican, asked for a moment of silence for “our friend Alan.”

Vera, an influential figure in Texas voting policy, helped found Houston-based True the Vote, a conservative nonprofit focused on voter fraud, and had been the Harris County GOP ballot-security chair since 2014. Well-respected among Republican lawmakers, he was frequently called to testify as a witness on election-related legislation.

Vera had been at the Texas Capitol almost every week this legislative session to testify on election legislation. Only two weeks ago, during a House Election Committee hearing, lawmakers sang “Happy Birthday” to Vera while he was at the podium and handed him a cookie with a candle in it.

“We lost a titan. Alan’s life was dedicated to selfless service, as seen from his time in the military, to working tirelessly towards getting Republicans elected and doing everything in his power to ensure elections across the nation are safe and secure through education and advocacy,” Siegel said in a statement.

“At the Texas Capitol, he was always the first in the building and the last to leave as he devoted countless hours to testifying before the House and Senate, meeting with legislators, and speaking with other activists to push for election integrity legislation.”

An Army veteran, who grew up in El Paso, Vera had been active in election integrity issues with the Republican Party for more than a decade.

Although there’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud, Vera told conservative Texas activist and megadonor Steven Hotze in a video last fall that he and his wife, Colleen Vera, became inspired to investigate it after attending a rally in Washington in 2009 organized by conservative TV personality Glenn Beck.

“It’s all God’s work,” Alan Vera said in the video. “We went out as poll watchers throughout Harris County, just to observe what was going on. And the things we saw just made our skin crawl. We saw such blatant fraud, such disregard for integrity or for the laws, and that got us fired up.”

Vera and Catherine Engelbrecht founded True the Vote in 2010 and trained hundreds of poll watchers before he left the group to volunteer for the Harris County Republican Party. Vera was also known for frequently challenging the legitimacy of registered voters in Harris County. He challenged the voter registration of thousands of voters in 2018 and did so again last year.

He was among a group of Harris County Republican Party leaders who sued Harris County in 2021 over district maps that they argued would favor Democrats. The Texas Supreme Court rejected the challenge.

The Harris County Attorney’s Office announced last summer it was investigating allegations that an election integrity group for which Vera was a board member — the Texas Election Network — had been knocking on doors, verifying voters’ addresses and asking them to sign affidavits.

Vera gave presentations to Tea Party and Republican Party groups across the state about how to fight voter fraud and used those meetings to recruit poll watchers.

Vera communicated closely with Republican lawmakers, including state Sens. Paul Bettencourt and Bryan Hughes and Rep. Briscoe Cain, and made suggestions to them and their legislative staff as they worked to pass a sweeping 2021 election bill known as Senate Bill 1. Recently, Vera was also involved in drafting proposed legislation for Hughes that would require the state to withdraw from a multistate coalition that helps Texas to clean its voter rolls.

On Thursday, Engelbrecht described Vera as “a fighter” and “indefatigable.”

“Throughout our long friendship and all the challenges we faced, never once did he waver in his commitment to supporting voters’ rights,” Engelbrecht said. “And he didn’t just talk — he served, selflessly, year after year. Together with his amazing wife, Colleen, they defined servant leadership. I am proud to have served alongside him.“

Votebeat editorial director Jessica Huseman contributed to this story.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat and covers election administration and voting access in partnership with The Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Senate Bill 1750 would abolish the county elections administrator position in Harris County and transfer election duties to the county clerk and tax assessor-collector. The Senate passed the bill, written by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican, on April 18. It will now go up for debate on the House floor.

The bill was originally written to affect all counties with populations of more than 1 million residents, but it was changed to focus solely on Harris after Bettencourt’s office conducted a survey of Texas’ largest counties and found that only Harris County had continuous problems, said Rep. Briscoe Cain, who presented the House version of the bill — House Bill 3876 — in committee Thursday.

“Each election seems to bring a new and bigger election disaster than the last,” said Cain, a Republican. “Harris County leadership has done nothing to remedy this embarrassingly poor quality of operation of the elections department.”

This is one of about a dozen bills Bettencourt has proposed this session that some voting rights activists say are a political response to Harris County’s Election Day problems in the past year.

The Texas Election Code allows counties’ election commissions, based on their individual needs, to assign election duties to the county clerk and tax assessor-collector — which are elected positions — or to create an elections department and appoint a nonpartisan elections administrator.

Harris in 2020 was the last large county in Texas to create an elections department and appoint an elections administrator. Dallas County, for example, created an election administration position in the 1980s, and slightly more than half of Texas’ 254 counties currently appoint an elections administrator to run their elections.

“This takes away all of that local power and that democracy involved in the process, and it’s just a takeover of one specific county that would not actually do anything for solutions for election administration,” said Katya Ehresman, voting rights program director for Common Cause Texas.

In last November’s general election, Harris County had to extend voting for an hour after various polling places had malfunctioning voting machines, paper ballot shortages and long waiting periods. More than 20 lawsuits from losing Republican candidates have been filed against the county, citing those problems and seeking a redo of the election. Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum, the county’s second elections administrator, hired only two months before November’s election, could not say early on how many polling locations ran out of paper on Election Day or whether anyone was prevented from voting.

Tatum lacked a sophisticated tracking system that many elections administrators use to manage polling place problems across the county in real time. He has since said the county will be equipped with such a tracking system for the upcoming May 6 municipal election.

Bettencourt has said he suspects malfeasance is behind the Harris County problems and has cited a report from a Houston-based TV station that says more than 100 locations ran out of paper, disenfranchising what he says are mostly Republican voters. But a recent investigation by the Houston Chronicle found that out of the more than 782 polling locations, only about 20 ran out of paper. The newspaper found that while the areas where paper stock ran low were slightly more likely to be areas dominated by Donald Trump voters in 2020 — about 55% of the polling places — it’s impossible to tell whether that’s where those voters cast their ballots since voters in Harris County can vote anywhere in the county.

Some supporters of the bill urged members of the House Elections Committee on Thursday to return election duties to elected officials everywhere in Texas and not just in Harris County.

“These issues are going in other counties — Bexar County, Dallas County, Bell County, medium-sized counties, Gillespie County — where the elections administrators are committing what I believe to be criminal acts,” said Laura Pressley, a well-known voter fraud activist who frequently has sued counties, election administrators and the Texas secretary of state for not following the Texas Election Code as she interprets it. “And the election commission doesn’t have the political will to do something.”

More than a dozen people signed up to testify on Bettencourt’s bill Thursday. However, Texas House Elections Committee Chair Rep. Reggie Smith, a Republican, noted that no Harris County leaders testified.

“No one in leadership from Harris County came to defend themselves,” Smith said. “Not [Harris County Commissioner] Rodney Ellis, and not the [elections administrator], nobody showed up to defend them.”

Some voting rights advocates and members of the public who spoke against the bill Thursday acknowledged there have been problems with the administration of elections in Harris County in recent years, but they say Bettencourt’s bill won’t solve those problems.

“A lot of those solutions are done through investment of resources, of staff, not abolishing an office and potentially causing staff to leave or have their positions removed,” Ehresman said. “With 30 days left in session, we haven’t had any hearings or public testimony on online voter registration or high school voter registration or investments in our election administration. We have very little time to actually do anything proactive for our elections.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Heider Garcia, who has been the elections director in Tarrant County since 2018, told county officials his last day on the job will be June 23, after the county’s May 6 general election, according to his letter of resignation obtained by Votebeat.

The resignation comes months after a newly elected county judge, the county’s top executive, took office. Tim O’Hare ran on a campaign that prioritized election integrity and frugal spending of tax dollars. Soon after he took office he debuted a county election integrity task force, despite the lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud.

While campaigning more than a year ago, O’Hare went on various conservative radio shows to speak about his priorities. He said “mail ballot harvesting” and “Democrats cheating” contributed to former President Donald Trump losing the 2020 election in Tarrant County.

Garcia, in his resignation letter to county leaders, wrote, “When leadership respects the team’s values and shows trust, members of the team become the best version of themselves. … Judge O’Hare, my formula to ‘administer a quality transparent election’ stands on respect and zero politics; compromising on these values is not an option for me. You made it clear in our last meeting that your formula is different, thus, my decision is to leave.”

Garcia declined to comment for this story.

In a statement, O’Hare said Garcia voluntarily resigned from his position. O’Hare said he will call an Election Commission meeting in a matter of days to talk about hiring a new elections administrator.

“I want nothing more than quality, transparent elections in Tarrant County. Supporting the creation of an Election Integrity Task Force was all about quality, transparent elections,” he wrote.

Tension has grown publicly between Garcia and O’Hare during the past few months.

Last week, O’Hare said during a public meeting that he planned to call a meeting to review Garcia’s performance after the May 6 municipal election.

“I want to say all things are on the table,” O’Hare said, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “I know there are a lot of people that want to get rid of the machines. I’m not telling you I’m a fan of the machines, want to keep the machines. I’m telling you you can cheat in paper ballots. You can in machines. You can cheat in all sorts of things.”

During a commissioners court meeting in February, O’Hare and other Republican commissioners questioned Garcia for about 20 minutes about the proposed purchase of a $150,000 laser paper cutter for a mail-ballot sorting machine.

The county had included that purchase in the budget approved for this year, Garcia told the commissioners. O’Hare said the piece of equipment was too expensive.

“I think it’s a total waste,” O’Hare said before voting against the purchase.

Garcia, like many other elections officials across the country, has faced harassment and racist death threats that stem from lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. Many administrators in Texas and across the country have resigned. Garcia, however, stood out and became known for taking a different approach to deal with some of the boisterous voter fraud activists: Instead of dismissing them or shutting them down, Garcia engaged with them and earned their trust. This tactic was praised by local and state election officials and others across the country.

Garcia was able to take such an approach and run a successful elections department in Texas’ third-most-populous county — and the state’s last major urban area led by Republicans — because he had the support of his bosses: the Tarrant County commissioners. Elections administrators rely heavily on those elected officials, who control the budget.

Former Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, a Republican who praised Garcia’s work, had said he had “greatest confidence” in him and denied any malfeasance in the county’s elections. Whitley did not seek reelection.

Whitley on Monday told Votebeat that if O’Hare had questions or concerns about the county’s elections, “he could have picked up the phone to call Heider to make those questions known and not wait until a Tuesday meeting,” he said, referring to O’Hare’s public statements on elections and the commissioner court meeting at which they debated equipment costs.

“I really hate to see [Garcia] leave. I don’t know whether it’ll be easy or not [to hire another elections administrator]. But I will tell you it wasn’t easy finding Heider Garcia. We’re gonna be hard pressed to find someone that even begins to be as capable as the one that we have,” Whitley said.

Tarrant County Republican Party Chair Rick Barnes told Votebeat he’s had a good relationship with Garcia over the years. But new leadership, he said, will always come in and question county procedures.

“If the answer is ‘Because we’ve always done it that way,’ there’s got to be a better answer,” Barnes said. When asked if that was O’Hare’s complaint about the county’s elections, Barnes said, “I think everything is up for conversation when you get new leadership, and that’s where we are right now.”

Leading into the November general election last fall, Texas’ then–Secretary of State John Scott said Garcia was the “prototype” of an elections administrator. On Monday, Scott told Votebeat he was thankful he got to know Garcia. Scott said as a voter in Tarrant County, having him run elections in his home county was “a blessing.”

“He’s one of those people who will always find ways to try and make things better. He was not ever unreceptive to a new way to do things, that’s why I called him a ‘prototype,’” Scott said.

According to the results of the secretary of state’s audit of the 2020 election in four counties, Tarrant County administered a “quality, transparent election.” When the findings were released last winter, Garcia said they showed that voters in the county can trust the process and “can be confident in the results of the elections.”

Garcia’s critics, too, have given him credit, with one election-fraud activist saying he makes other election officials in the state “look like idiots.”

“He’ll answer all of your questions,” said Aubree Campbell, a voter-fraud activist in the county who runs a group dubbed Taking Back Texas.

In a statement, Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair Allison Campolo said the party is “alarmed at the circumstances” that led to Garcia’s resignation and condemned O’Hare and other members of the “extremist Republican Party.”

“Under Garcia’s leadership, our county demonstrated fairness and accuracy in our voting systems, as verified by numerous audits and citizen recounts,” the statement says.

Other elections administrators in Texas, and Garcia’s colleagues, were saddened by news of his departure.

“Heider is the gold standard. If he could do anything to help people understand elections, if he could just let them inside to see everything that we do, he would,” said Melynn Huntley, Potter County elections administrator, whose last election will also be May 6, as she’s decided to retire after 10 years in elections.

“The difference is I always had support and still have support of leadership. And I cannot imagine if you do not have a county judge and commissioners who trust you, and who understand, then it’s just that much more difficult,” Huntley said.

Hays County Elections Administrator Jennifer Doinoff said Garcia’s resignation “hit the elections community hard.” She added that Garcia will “depart Tarrant County with every ounce of professionalism and poise that he has exhibited throughout his time there.”

“It’s a shock,” said Chris Davis, elections administrator in Williamson County, who has known Garcia since he was appointed to his role to run elections in Tarrant in 2018. “I wish Tarrant County luck in finding somebody as professional, forward-thinking and as focused on transparency and accuracy.”

“This is a big loss for voters in Tarrant County,” Davis said, “because he was doing everything right.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

In virtual meetings taking place over a year, right-wing activists and Republican legislators have stoked concern over a multistate coalition that Texas and more than 30 other states use to help clean voter rolls. The majority of their grievances — that it is run by left-wing voter registration activists and funded by George Soros, among other things — were pulled straight from a far-right conspiracy website and are baseless.

Now, lawmakers who regularly attend those meetings have introduced legislation written by the group that would end Texas’s participation in the Electronic Registration Information Center, also known as ERIC.

The bills were introduced despite the efforts of Texas’s elections director, who attended a meeting and offered factual information related to their concerns last April, apparently without success.

Keith Ingram, the elections director for the secretary of state’s office, told the group the program was the only option available to ensure voters aren’t registered or voting in more than one state at the same time. Nonetheless, the activists moved forward with an effort that experts say is set to undermine one of the best election integrity tools available to Texas and other states to prevent election fraud.

“We want to be able to do something and we have a senator that’s willing to help change that or add language or improve or reform ERIC,” said Toni Anne Dashiell last August, referring to Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola. Dashiell, the Republican national committeewoman for Texas, organizes the meetings and refers to them as “TAD Talks.”

Shortly after, the group’s ERIC task force — led by Alan Vera, the current Harris County Republican Party ballot security chairman, and Dana Myers, the Texas Republican Party vice-chair — began drafting legislation. Myers declined to comment for this story. Dashiell and Vera did not respond to Votebeat’s requests for comment or to emailed questions about how the effort would improve elections in Texas.

Vera announced during a January meeting of the task force that they had submitted the draft of such a bill to Hughes’ staff for review. Hughes, who attended almost every single one of the virtual meetings, filed legislation with their suggestions as Senate Bill 1070 in February. Rep. Jacey Jetton, R-Richmond, also a regular speaker in the virtual calls, filed a companion bill in the House. Hughes and Jetton did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“Now, there is no evidence that ERIC is doing anything to Texas voter rolls, I want to be clear about that,” Hughes said during a virtual meeting in October. “But we do know, again, that the people running ERIC don’t share our worldview.”

The conservative campaign against ERIC, long considered the gold standard for cleaning voter rolls, began with misinformation published starting last year by a conservative website, The Gateway Pundit, about ERIC’s funding and origins. As conservative doubts grew and ERIC, led by Executive Director Shane Hamlin, attempted to correct the record, activists in some states began pushing Republican officials to withdraw.

Louisiana became the first state to pull out last summer, followed by Alabama in January, after a new secretary of state took office. At an ERIC board meeting last month, officials for some Republican-led states pushed for changes they said were necessary for them to remain members: Eliminating a requirement that member states reach out to eligible but unregistered voters and removing an ex officio board member, former U.S. Department of Justice voting rights lawyer David Becker, who now heads an election-focused nonpartisan nonprofit and has been an outspoken critic of conspiracy theories about elections.

This week, in the wake of the board meeting, three states — Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia — announced they would leave the program. Some officials whose states remain, including Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose of Ohio, say they will also depart if the board doesn’t agree to the requested changes.

Largely due to the organization and advocacy of those attending these virtual meetings — the recordings of which are online — Texas could be next.

Experts say ERIC is among the state’s most helpful tools at preventing the exact type of fraud those who participated in “TAD Talks” profess concern about.

ERIC data from June 2022 helped Texas identify 100,000 in-state duplicate voters and another 100,000 duplicates of people who moved in or out of state, lists sent to counties to investigate. The Texas GOP and several other local and national conservative coalitions have for years demanded the kind of results ERIC has produced, stressing the need to keep voter rolls clean and prevent illegal voting. Supporters of ERIC say efforts to withdraw from the compact undercut that goal.

Former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican who left office after deciding against running for another term last year, told Votebeat that if states stop using ERIC, the potential for election fraud could increase “exponentially.”

Merrill said that since the program was created in 2012, there have been no instances of vulnerabilities or irregularities associated with it. “Nothing has ever happened. Nothing’s ever been documented. Only these failed claims that have been introduced without any empirical data to back it up whatsoever,” Merrill said. “Why would you want to eliminate this? That tool has helped us be in a position to prosecute those people who have violated the trust and confidence of the process. And there is no other system in the United States at this time that matches that.”

But the Gateway Pundit’s campaign against ERIC has resonated in conservative circles.

In addition to unfounded speculation about Soros, the fringe site has also claimed that ERIC shares people’s personal data with unauthorized third parties and that it is a leftist scheme to enroll ineligible voters. These claims have taken deep root, and former President Donald Trump openly celebrated the announcements of departing states this week.

The TAD Talks group in Texas first met almost three months after the Gateway Pundit began focusing on ERIC. By its second meeting, they were joined by Keith Ingram, the Texas Secretary of State’s elections division director. In no uncertain terms, he told them that ERIC was crucial to keeping Texas’s voter rolls clean and no alternative to the program existed. He also addressed a list of their concerns about funding, information sharing, and data security.

“Without ERIC, we wouldn’t have this cross-state data. We wouldn’t have the ability to find people who voted twice, or who voted after they were deceased,” Ingram told them firmly. “And we found duplicate voters in Texas as well, and we’re going to be prosecuting those. But all of that comes from the ERIC data.”

In the moment, the group appeared receptive. Dashiell, the Republican National Committeewoman for Texas responded: “Well, that’s incredible. Very good, Keith. Thank you. Very important information.”

Then, they essentially ignored him, meeting again months later and reintroducing the same false talking points Ingram had corrected. In January, the state party included an effort “to replace [ERIC] with a trustworthy system” that would ensure “only qualified and legitimate voters are voting” in the party’s legislative priorities for this year’s session.

“For those of you who want to explain ERIC to others who may not know: that is the cozily voter roll purging system that Texas is signed into. However I’m actually going to call it ‘Everybody Realized that this Is Corrupt.’ That’s what ERIC stands for,” Myers, the Texas GOP vice chair, said as she announced the legislative priorities during an election integrity gathering at the Texas Capitol in January hosted by conservative coalition Texas First. Myers declined to comment for this story.

Russ Ramsland, a Texas-based Republican businessman also known for spreading election conspiracy theories, was a featured speaker that day. The event was live streamed and promoted online by The America Project — a well-funded organization led by Trump allies Michael Flynn and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, both known for spreading election fraud conspiracy theories. Myers also did a presentation with inaccurate information about ERIC in February at the Texas Federation of Republican Women Legislative Day event.

Almost none of what the so-called “TAD Talks” participants say about ERIC is true. Rather than a Soros-funded group run by liberal activists, it is a nonprofit organization paid for and managed by the member states.

“Organizations like ERIC have sought to bolster access and confidence in our electoral processes by facilitating secure, interstate data sharing to ensure more accurate voter rolls. There’s broad bipartisan agreement by state and local election officials that this system works and has improved our elections over the last decade,” said Trey Grayson, former Kentucky secretary of state and a Republican. He said he was “deeply troubled to see politics and disinformation get in the way of best practices.”

Members of ERIC agree to send their full state voter rolls to ERIC every 60 days, along with records from a state identification agency. In Texas, that’s the Department of Motor Vehicles. That state data must include identifying information, if available, for every voter, such as an address, partial Social Security number, and phone number. ERIC then uses all of the data provided by its member states to find matches on multiple data points, suggesting people who may be registered in more than one state. It also identifies those who have died or moved, and flags flawed or incomplete registrations for correction by state officials. But it doesn’t control or manage state voter rolls.

ERIC does not email sensitive voter data and passwords back and forth and does not store it all on an unprotected server. It follows specific and extensive security protocols, which are detailed in its bylaws, and a board of cybersecurity experts advise the program as part of its Privacy and Technology Advisory Board.

Texas has been a member of the program since 2020. Of the $1.5 million that Texas allocates annually for the program, approximately $115,000 of that goes to ERIC to pay for membership dues. The rest goes to postage, mailing, and printing costs the state pays to send invitations to people whom ERIC identifies as eligible voters but who are not yet registered, something ERIC requires its member states to do.

While the price tag might seem high, experts tell Votebeat the program is worth the cost: It would cost the state substantially more money to access on its own the type of national data ERIC uses.

ERIC covers the costs of the subscription to the Social Security death data and the National Change of Address data, which for non-ERIC members could amount several hundred thousand dollars more per year. In addition, in order to maintain these subscriptions, non-ERIC members would have to spend more money to meet federal data handling requirements.

Still, for the GOP task force leading the effort to get rid of ERIC, the $1.5 million price tag is too high. Their solution was to include a price ceiling in the legislation they wrote for Hughes.

The bill requires the state to use a “private sector data system,” and restricts costs to begin such a program to $100,000. Ongoing costs may not exceed “$1 for each voter identified.” The bill also requires such a system to identify people who have been convicted of a felony and says the secretary of state may not provide information to such a system that “is not found in a voter roll and necessary to identify voters.”

It is unclear what alternative to ERIC they think would meet those specific requirements, and neither Hughes nor Jetton has publicly identified one. Texas law requires the state to participate in a multi-state information sharing program to clean its voter rolls, said Sam Taylor, the spokesperson for the Texas secretary of state. Taylor said the office isn’t aware of any system comparable to ERIC, though “we are open to learning about other potentially viable, cost-effective alternatives,” he said.

A smattering of activist groups have publicly signaled interest in creating a replacement for ERIC, though none appears to have access to the breadth of data ERIC uses. At least one option Dashiell’s group considered is funded by MyPillow CEO and well known election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell.

At a meeting of the task force in February, Vera said they’ve been “evaluating” half a dozen options in the private sector, which he says can do more than what ERIC does and are more affordable, though he offered little evidence of either assertion.

He suggested using a system initially funded by Lindell called Omega4America or a program he referred to as “Eagle AI.” Without offering more detail, Vera told participants the Eagle AI program had been demonstrated at the Capitol last month, an assertion Votebeat has been unable to verify.

Vera said that at a GOP event, the Eagle AI team had presented “some stunning examples of the unacceptable condition of the voter rolls in Harris County. It was obvious to everybody present that ERIC is not helping.”

Active in election integrity issues with the Republican Party for decades, Vera is also known for frequently challenging the legitimacy of registered voters in Harris County. The Harris County Attorney’s Office announced last summer it was investigating allegations that Vera’s election integrity group — the Texas Election Network — had been knocking on doors, verifying voters’ addresses, and asking them to sign affidavits.

Vera did not answer Votebeat’s questions about who runs the programs he has suggested to replace ERIC, how those programs store data, or the matching methodology used.

A nonprofit run by former Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, a prominent purveyor of election misinformation, is also considering attempting to create a new form of ERIC, according to one of the nonprofit’s directors, Cochise County Recorder David Stevens.

Finchem recently repurposed a research nonprofit he founded in 2018 to focus on election policy, renaming it the Election Fairness Institute.

Stevens told Votebeat that there are “a few visions” for what the nonprofit will do, but one is “potentially a nationwide voter registration type repository,” he said.

“We will see what kind of work comes around,” he said.

Finchem and Stevens did not return calls seeking more information this week.

Some who have already tried to find or create a private sector system or nonprofit to replace ERIC told Votebeat it would be “impossible” to do.

While data from sources such as the U.S. Postal Service can give indicators of when a voter should be removed from the rolls, governments do not give out enough data on individual voters to identify hard matches, said Matt Braynard, a former director for the Trump campaign who now runs Look Ahead America, a national nonprofit that is advocating for tighter voter roll laws in states.

“Only the governments, with their access to very capable tools, like knowing someone’s Social Security number or someone’s full birthday, can do this,” he said. The type of matching used by programs without such data “sometimes is helpful, but in cases like this it is useless.”

Look Ahead America found this out firsthand recently, as it is using the U.S. Postal Service data in 10 states to produce lists of thousands of voters in each state who may have moved and therefore may not be eligible — one of the functions ERIC provides. With their more limited access to data, Look Ahead America had no way of claiming for certain that the voters should be removed from the rolls and their efforts were ignored by county clerks, Braynard said.

“That was a difficult nightmare, and in a lot of cases, the county clerk just said, ‘Screw you guys,’ ” he said.

And some policy experts say obtaining the kind of additional data the Texas Republicans leading the effort and Hughes are seeking, which aims to identify people with felony convictions, would certainly cost more than $100,000 to compile.

“Building something up like that would have fewer members and that would also try to cover areas or groups of ineligible voters that haven’t been covered by any sort of interstate system like that before is going to be a real challenge,” said Daniel Griffith, senior director of policy at Secure Democracy USA.

Demands from conservatives to keep the voter rolls clean and updated have been made for years — long before Trump spread lies about the outcome of the 2020 election.

In 2018, before Texas allocated the funding needed to join ERIC, a coalition of more than 100 conservatives in the state — including election fraud activist Laura Pressley — sent two letters to Gov. Greg Abbott demanding that Texas use a cross-state data sharing program to prevent non-citizens from voting. The coalition, formed by the Smith County–based Grassroots America political action committee, even suggested the state use ERIC or the now-defunct Kansas Crosscheck system. But now, Grassroots America has also joined the calls for Texas to withdraw from ERIC.

Merrill, the former Alabama secretary of state, told Votebeat he’s disappointed to see the number of conservative leaders who have promoted election integrity in their states but are now choosing to not use ERIC, a tool he described as “one of the greatest” for “election integrity, transparency and accountability.” Alabama had been a member of ERIC since 2016.

“You cannot hear me say this enough: If you want to eliminate ERIC, then that’s your right. But if you eliminate it, what are you going to replace it with? Because there is no mechanism in place today that accomplishes the goal that ERIC accomplishes,” Merrill said.

“If they say that they’ve got something, well then show me the money. Show me that it’s successful. Show me the beef.”

Votebeat reporter Jen Fifield contributed to this story.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.com

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Election administration experts told Votebeat the legislation was an overreaction to the desire to hold Harris County accountable for years of election mismanagement, and would disrupt the state’s ability to help county election offices improve and address systemic problems.

If passed, the secretary of state’s office would change from being a guide and resource for election workers to being an auditor that can investigate and fire them. Some election officials are concerned this change could prevent local election workers from asking questions or seeking help from the office for fear of being reprimanded.

“Currently we work hand-in-hand. [The secretary of state’s staff] are our No. 1 resource, and that benefits all voters,” said Jennifer Doinoff, Hays County elections administrator. “Putting them in the position of oversight would definitely change the dynamic.”

Authored by Rep. Tom Oliverson and Sen. Paul Bettencourt, both Harris County Republicans, the bills are among several already filed this legislative session in reaction to the long lines, late openings and reports of shortages of ballot paper on Election Day in Harris County. More than 20 lawsuits from losing Republican candidates have also been filed against the county, citing those problems and seeking a redo of the election. Harris County Elections Administrator Cliff Tatum did not respond to Votebeat’s request for his comment about the legislation.

House Bill 2020 and Senate Bill 823 would allow the secretary of state’s office to take action in a county if a complaint is filed by one of several officials and organizations involved in elections, and if there’s “good cause to believe that a recurring pattern of problems with election administration exists.”

The bills list five causes for suspension of an elections administrator:

Currently, any problems that arise in an election or with an elections administrator are handled by the county’s election commission. Those commissions are made up of the county judge, the tax assessor-collector, the county clerk and the chairs of local political parties. The commission’s oversight powers allow it to appoint, terminate or accept the resignation of the county’s election administrator.

Some Texas voting rights groups worry the Legislature will use the problems in Harris and those lawsuits as “an excuse” to advance bills such as these. The League of Women Voters of Texas in a statement last week said such legislation, if passed, “is fraught for potential abuse, infringes on the rights of county governments to select their own elections administrator, and demeans the meaning of local governance.”

Slightly more than half of Texas counties appoint nonpartisan election administrators to run their elections. This legislation would apply only in those counties and not in the 122 that elect county clerks or tax assessors tasked with running elections and handling voter registration.

“We are subject to the authorities of those that appointed us,” said Remi Garza, Cameron County elections administrator and the Texas Association of Elections Administrators legislative committee co-chair. “It does cause concern that somebody from outside that jurisdiction would be able to usurp the authority of the elections commission in dealing with their elections administrator.”

Each county in Texas runs its elections differently, depending on their size and the resources. Rather than demanding accountability from under-resourced administrators, experts say legislators should instead proactively ask county election officials whether they have the resources, structures and personnel they need to get the job done.

“I’m not saying election administrators are perfect and should never be reviewed. But we’re not seeing the kind of higher-level discussions being led primarily by experts, meaning the election officials, the people that are actually running elections,” said David Becker, founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

No bills have been filed this legislative session that would help fund county election departments’ infrastructure. In his State of the State speech, Gov. Greg Abbott did not mention elections, funding for them or expanding voter access — and neither did Texas Democratic lawmakers in their response. Although there is no evidence of widespread fraud, one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s priority bills would raise the penalty of illegal voting to a felony.

“You just can’t wait for these problems to reoccur. If the locals won’t take action, it’s imperative that the state does,” Bettencourt said, speaking about Harris County’s mismanagement of elections in the past year.

The secretary of state’s elections division receives several hundred complaints per year about all kinds of voting concerns. Those complaints are reviewed by the division’s attorneys, and if they determine there is a clear violation of the Election Code with a criminal penalty, then the office refers the complaint to the attorney general or a local district attorney to investigate.

The majority of the complaints the office receives, however, do not warrant investigations and don’t get referred. The office does not have the authority to enforce laws or the resources to investigate complaints.

The secretary of state’s office declined to comment on how much additional funding and staff the office would need to comply with the measure. The office’s spokesperson, Sam Taylor, told Votebeat the elections division will answer questions if the bill moves forward and is discussed in committee.

The secretary of state helps election workers conduct elections and interpret election laws. The office also provides advice and training for election workers and answers questions for the public. Both county clerks and election administrators across the state rely heavily on the secretary of state’s elections division for guidance. Some election officials are concerned the measure, if passed, could alienate election officials seeking help or answers.

Doinoff, the Hays County elections administrator, said she doesn’t hesitate to pick up the phone to call the secretary of state’s office when she hears from voters who have complaints or questions that she doesn’t know the answers to.

“I do that knowing that they’re going to give me the right answer, and then I can move forward and make sure I’m doing things correctly in the county,” Doinoff said. “But I think if [the secretary of state’s staff] were in a position of being able to determine if an election official was going to be suspended or fired, then maybe election officials wouldn’t make that call in the first place, and ultimately that impacts the county and the voters.”

It’s still unclear exactly how the process would work for fielding complaints and suspending and appointing election administrators, and whether local election officials would be able to respond or be given a chance to resolve the problems raised in the complaints.

That lack of detail is concerning some election officials.

“When anybody’s job is subject to termination or suspension is concerning. But especially when you aren’t fully briefed on what the due process is going to be,” said Garza, the Cameron County elections administrator.

Other states that have given state officials control over local election administration include Georgia, Arkansas, Colorado and Florida.

Most recently, Georgia came close to replacing the elections director and taking over operations in the state’s most populous county.

In 2020, Fulton County was criticized after several polling locations during the June primary had hourslong lines, delaying election results. Although the November presidential election ran without major problems, the county was at the center of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the outcome of the election.

In 2021, Georgia Republican lawmakers passed the sweeping voting bill SB 202 with a provision that allows the State Board of Elections to investigate and take over a county’s elections operations and remove county election officials. Lawmakers then requested such an investigation be done in Fulton.

Earlier this month, the State Board of Elections received the findings. A report says that although there were administrative and procedural problems in the county, it has made improvements in its recent elections, implemented new procedures and acquired new staff. Members of a panel that conducted the review told the State Board of Elections that “replacing the [election officials] would not be helpful and would in fact hinder the ongoing improvements in Fulton County elections.”

The review and investigation of the county was the first of its kind and led by three volunteers: one attorney and two local election officials. Several hundred other volunteers also contributed to the review, which took a year and a half to complete.

During a public meeting, the review panel members told the board and state lawmakers that such reviews would not be feasible in the future without additional funding and resources from the Legislature. The review panel members also told the board that such a process should be done periodically instead of just once or only when problems arise.

“Such an effort would keep counties up to speed with best practices, the latest technologies and apply metrics for performance assessment,” review panel member Stephen Day said during the public meeting earlier this month. “It is better to be a partner than an adversary. Better to improve systems before dysfunction, rather than trying to fix them after the fact.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

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