The legislation, which passed the Senate 19-12, would give Abbott’s appointed secretary of state the authority to order an entirely new election in Harris County if the county ever again runs out of paper at 2 percent or more of its polling sites for over an hour.GOP leaders say Harris County's ballot shortage was targeted at Republicans. Here's what the data says.
“You want to vest in a political appointee the ability to make a decision as to whether or not an election should be overturned and reheld?” asked state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, during a debate in the Senate on Monday.Texas Republicans say lowering the bar for overturning elections is bad policy. So why did they try?“I would disagree about overturning — you’re calling a new election so voters get to vote again,” Middleton said. “You get the opportunity to vote again.
Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, took offense to Middleton’s bill for only giving Abbott’s appointee the power to overturn an election in Harris County, the most populous of the state’s 254 counties. The cost of that new election would also be the responsibility of taxpayers in Harris County, which would cost millions of dollars.
Harris County was a Republican stronghold as recently as 2014. Since then, though, Democrats have won the majority of county commission seats, the county judge's office and swept nearly every judicial seat. Statewide candidates like Abbott, Sen. Ted Cruz and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who all have deep ties to Harris County, won the county in 2014. But all three have lost the county in recent years, narrowing the margins in their statewide re-elections.
“You’ve got a bill directly targeting Harris County, and you’ve got problems in your own damn district in Galveston — major problems,” Miles said.
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