Feh.
Harris County has again been selected for a state-mandated elections audit following a random draw conducted by the Texas Secretary of State Tuesday.
The audit is the county’s second in four years stemming from a 2021 bill the Legislature passed during the peak of election denialism following President Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat, one of several ways Republican lawmakers have scrutinized Harris County’s elections in recent years.
That scrutiny continues to bubble after the previous audit found widespread issues, including ballot paper shortages and other deficiencies.
State officials will review the county’s elections operations over a two-year period from 2025 through 2026.
It will be the first such review of elections overseen by County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth, who took over the duty after state lawmakers abolished the county’s elections administrator position in 2023. Hudspeth said in 2024 her office “will continue to ensure that the concerns that plagued the now-defunct Elections Administrator’s Office are not revisited.”
Scrapping the elections administrator returned voter registrar duties to the tax-assessor collector and election operations to the county clerk. Hudspeth did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Tax Assessor-Collector Annette Ramirez welcomed the audit in a Wednesday afternoon statement.
“This is not our first rodeo. We take our voter registration processes seriously and are very familiar with the audit process,” Ramirez said. “Being selected again is another opportunity for us to provide transparency into our process as we continue to fulfill our statutory duties.”
State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said part of the audit will focus on a previous complaint he filed after discovering more than 100 voters registered at P.O. boxes at UPS stores and postal offices around the county.
Despite these concerns, Bettencourt, who previously served as Harris County tax assessor-collector, said the county’s election operations have improved since 2022.
“There’s no question. There’s been significant improvement,” Bettencourt said, referring to elections managed by Hudspeth.
The 2021 elections audit bill mandated four counties — two with populations over 300,000 and two below — be randomly selected every two years for a comprehensive review of their elections operations.
Whatever. There are currently only sixteen counties with 300K or more people, and since the two that were the unlucky victims the last time were not in the hopper to be selected, Harris County’s odds were one in seven. The odds that we’d be selected both times we were “eligible” for it is 1/56, less than two percent, given that all 16 big counties would have been available for the first one in 2022. Those are low odds, but these things do happen, so while I understand everyone who rolled their eyes at this, it’s just bad luck. If it happens again in 2030, then I will demand that we conduct a full forensic analysis on the whole cursed setup. In the meantime, someone please buy Teneshia Hudspeth and her whole office all the snacks they want.
IMHO, the selection of Harris County for another elections audit was not, definitely not, random. From top to bottom, all the elected and selected GOPs hate and fear Harris County’s leaning toward honesty and concern for all its residents.
I do not believe that Harris County being selected for the audit again is due to bad luck. Not for one single bazillasecond. These nasty GOPers lie and cheat about everything all day every day without batting an eye, just part of the job.