On Monday, the Texas House Elections Committee held its second interim hearing to monitor adherence to Texas election law.
Audits reviewed during the hearing suggest that Texas still has a way to go before elections are trustworthy.
The Secretary of State’s office presented findings from its most recent round of audits. After every election cycle, the trends are clear across all audited counties: improve documentation protocols.
SOS Elections Director Christina Adkins stressed to House members that paperwork at polling locations must be completed accurately, and chain of custody needs attention because it tells the story of how an election is conducted.
While all of the audited counties received attention, Harris County, the largest in the state and one of the counties audited by the SOS office, dominated the discussion, given the impact the county can have on statewide results.
Complaints about Harris County’s elections have been ongoing for years, and when they switched election equipment in 2021, those complaints accelerated. No hands-on training occurred after introducing the new machines, meaning election workers learned on the job. This resulted in significant gaps in vote casting in multiple locations across multiple elections.
While the SOS office praised the completion of voter roll list maintenance activities, conservative activists have recently encountered issues with challenging voter registrations based on residency due to the requirement of “personal knowledge.”
Many counties have raised the bar on the “personal knowledge” definition to ignore residency challenges made to registrations in Texas.
The committee hearing occurred hours after Gov. Greg Abbott announced that over 1 million voters had been removed from Texas voter rolls, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick placed the blame for a lack of election reforms at the feet of embattled Speaker Dade Phelan.
Interestingly, State Rep. Eddie Morales (D-Edinburg) was the only Democrat committee member in attendance; Vice Chairman John Bucy, Manuel Christian, and Hubert Vo were absent.
While he did not attend, Bucy had Rep. Morales act as a surrogate. Bucy texted Morales to advocate for emailing votes to election officials if a voter was traveling during the election, a measure Bucy has been unable to pass into law during his time in the House.
Morales also praised Chairman Reggie Smith (R-Sherman) for chairing the Elections Committee and Speaker Dade Phelan for his appointment. Smith was defeated in the 2024 primary election after voting to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton during the session.
Notably, the committee had several questions that would have been appropriately directed to the Attorney General’s office. The hearing was open to invited testimony only.
The committee also discussed the issue of votes being deduced by the process of elimination. Adkins said the SOS’s preferred solutions are larger precinct sizes or mixing precinct reporting results in low-turnout elections to mask voter identity.
Christine Welborn, President of Advancing Integrity, praised the Secretary of State’s office for “promoting fixes instead of removing transparency.” The committee confirmed that redacting is currently used to protect sensitive information and is a temporary fix.
