Texas Republicans Want to Take Over Elections in This Democratic Stronghold

Ryan Teague Beckwith
·5 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Texas Republicans are seeking to take control of elections in the Houston area, a growing Democratic stronghold that is making statewide races more competitive and could eventually turn the state into a presidential battleground.

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So far this year, Republican state lawmakers have proposed eliminating the local elections clerk’s job; allowing the Republican-appointed secretary of state to suspend the clerk; letting the secretary of state overturn an election in the county and order a new one; creating new “election marshals” to investigate and press charges against elections clerks; and potentially allowing election charges to be brought in a neighboring county.

The sweeping proposals come as the greater Houston area has seen a population boom and shift among its highly educated suburban voters away from the GOP and toward Democrats, raising the possibility that the county could lead long-Republican Texas into the Democrats’ column.

Local officials around Houston say the bills are targeted at them. The text of two of the bills even says they would only apply to counties of a certain size, eliminating all but Harris, a sprawling metropolis criss-crossed by 10-lane freeways.

Some other bills are broader but would affect the Houston area more than the rest of the state. One would bar the use of voter centers — a location where any voter can cast a ballot — which have helped reduce travel time and confusion over polling places in a county which covers more land than London.

“It seems that we are being punished for voting for Democrats,” said Nicole Pedersen, voter protection director for the Harris County Democratic Party. “Because Republicans can’t win in Harris County, they are now trying to assert power over it at the state level.”

But Republicans argue that they are focused on Harris County because of ballot shortages in the midterm elections.

Republican state Senator Paul Bettencourt, who used to manage Harris County elections and is the sponsor of several of the bills, said that the shortages were undermining confidence, leaving voters wondering if they would be able to cast a ballot at their polling place.

“I flat have had enough, period,” he said. “It cannot be tolerated.”

A recent investigation by the Houston Chronicle found that 20 out of the county’s 782 polling places ran out of paper at some point in the day, some for as little as 15 minutes, far fewer than Republicans have claimed.

It’s unclear which bills will make it to Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s desk by the time the legislature ends the 2023 session at the end of May. Voting-rights advocates who are tracking the bills note that hearings have been scheduled with less than the usual notice and they expect at least one of the bills to pass the legislature before the end of the session, though they don’t know which one.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said the county will sue if the bill allowing elections to be overturned is signed into law, while powerhouse Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias said he’ll be reviewing it to see if a legal challenge “is appropriate.”

Other Republican-led states have also targeted election practices in increasingly Democratic urban areas, according to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab.

In Georgia, lawmakers banned the use of a souped-up RV as a mobile voting center after Fulton County, home of Atlanta, began using one. In Tennessee, the legislature barred the use of instant-runoff voting after Memphis planned to use it in local races. Arizona, Florida and Texas authorized targeted audits of the 2020 election results in major urban areas.

In 2021, Texas banned drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, two innovations pioneered by Harris County the prior year. Houston and its suburbs are home to one of the world’s densest agglomerations of petrochemical and industrial manufacturing, which means tens of thousands of people work the graveyard shift.

With more than 4.7 million residents, Harris isn’t just Texas’ largest county, it’s the third largest in the United States, with a population larger than 25 states. While Houston itself has long been a Democratic bastion, the outer areas are now trending away from the GOP as new transplants move in and highly-educated suburban voters shift toward the Democrats.

In 2020, Harris County backed Biden over Trump by 13 percentage points, even as Texas overall went for Trump by 5.6 points, and it provided more than one of six votes Biden received in the state.

‘Game Over’

Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic PAC, said that while Republicans dominate Texas right now, each election they lose a little ground as Harris County and similar urban areas grow and become more Democratic. He sees Republican proposals to limit or control voting there as an attempt to minimize their losses.

“Harris County is a place where Republicans know they can’t let the score go up too high,” he said. “Democrats now regularly win, but if those percentages start moving from the mid 50s to the high 50s, there are not enough rural voters in the rest of the state for Republicans to make that up.”

Republicans have been clear that they are worried about that possibility. After winning an unexpectedly close reelection race in 2018, Texas Senator Ted Cruz said that the state could soon become a presidential battleground, which would be especially damaging for Republicans, who depend on its cache of 40 electors to reach a 270 majority in most of their Electoral College maps.

Losing Texas, Cruz said, would be “game over” for Republicans.

--With assistance from Joe Carroll.

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