Texas Republicans have removed election functions from Harris County, home of Houston and 4.8 million Texans, and granted those powers to Secretary of State Jane Nelson, setting the county and one-sixth of the state's citizens to be disenfranchised in future elections.
Texas Republicans wound down their regular legislative session Sunday by changing election policies for a single populous Democratic stronghold but not other parts of the state.
The measure gives the secretary of state under certain conditions the power to run elections in Harris County, home to Houston and 4.8 million residents. It follows a bill approved days earlier that shifts the oversight of elections from its appointed elections administrator to the county clerk and county assessor.
Harris County officials at a news conference last week said they would bring a lawsuit challenging the measures as soon as Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signs them into law.
“These bills are not about election reform,” said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s chief executive. “They’re not about improving voters’ experience. They are entirely about suppressing voters’ voices. The reasoning behind these bills is nothing but a cynical charade.”
Also over recent days, the Republican-controlled legislature passed bills increasing penalties for illegal voting and likely setting the stage for the state to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center. The center was formed in 2012 to help states maintain accurate voter rolls, identify instances of potential fraud and contact people so they can register to vote. More than half the states belong to the consortium, but some Republican-run states have bolted from it over the last year as election deniers have spread false information about its work.
Critics are concerned about how the two bills affecting Harris County will interact with one another. One bill requires the county to change who oversees its elections starting Sept. 1, just weeks before Houston holds its election for mayor.
The quick transition could easily lead to problems, opponents of the measure say. If problems do occur, Secretary of State Jane Nelson could use the provisions of the other newly passed bill to oversee elections in Harris County. That would mean Nelson, a former state senator appointed as secretary of state by Abbott, would be in charge of the 2024 presidential election for the county.
And if Nelson did not believe that the new officials in charge of elections — Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth and County Assessor Ann Harris Bennett — had rectified problems, she could initiate legal proceedings to remove them from office under the legislation. Local officials said it would be unjust to allow the secretary of state the power to take action against two Black women but not those who hold equivalent positions in the state’s 253 other counties.
Under the bill, Nelson could oversee elections in Harris County if she found “good cause to believe that a recurring pattern of problems with election administration or voter registration exists in the county.” She would get to sign off on all of the county’s election procedures and could install members of her staff in Harris County offices.
The bill is of course designed to make Harris County elections fail so that Republicans can simply remove county elected officials (who just happen to be Democrats) and to replace them with Republican state officials. Of course, this only applies to Texas's most populous county, setting up a situation where the Secretary of State can annul and overturn any elections in the county because of "irregularities" and disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters without anything more than a whim.
Near-permanent one-party rule is the goal, where any Democrats elected in Harris County would have their elections thrown out. It's what fascist states like Texas do.
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