Mayor shares results from equity study County fles lawsuit over election law

Defender News Service

Harris County is suing the State of Texas to overturn a law that would abolish the appointed post of Harris County elections administrator. County leaders fear the law, if implemented on schedule, would throw this year’s November election into chaos.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee filed the lawsuit in Travis County, naming Acting Attorney General John Scott and Secretary of State Jane Nelson as the defendants in their ofcial capacities.

“In the next week, we’ll reach out to the court to get a hearing date, because we’re asking the court to temporarily block Senate Bill 1750 from taking efect,” Menefee said, announcing the lawsuit. “I suspect we’ll be able to get a hearing in the next month, and at that hearing, that issue should be decided.”

SB 1750, which applies only to Harris County, is set to go into efect September 1st. It would force the county to turn over the running of elections to the elected county clerk and the management of voter rolls to the elected county tax assessor-collector with less than two months to go before the start of early voting.

“Tis will eliminate the job of our current elections administrator, Cliford Tatum,” Menefee said, “and it means that more than 150 county employees are going to have to undergo substantial changes, another major change, in just a three-year time period.”

Republican lawmakers and Governor Greg Abbott have insisted SB 1750 is necessary because recurring problems since Harris County switched to an appointed elections administrator in late 2020 showed the administrator’s ofce was, at best, incompetent to manage elections in the county. At worst, they alleged the ofce manipulated the conduct of voting to favor Democratic candidates through the deliberate shorting of paper ballots to polling centers in Republican-leaning neighborhoods.

Harris County’s commissioners court is made up of three Hispanic Democrats, one Black Democrat, and one white Republican. Te county attorney, county clerk, county tax assessor-collector are all elected Black Democrats, while the county elections administrator, also Black, was appointed by an election commission made up of four Democrats and one Republican.

“Tis is representative of a bully picking on this county,” said County Commissioner Adrian Garcia, who singled out Abbott and Republican lawmakers for condemnation. “Tis is an efort to create a new type of poll tax and voter suppression on the citizens of Harris County in 2023, and that is unconscionable.”