Harris County elections administrator resigns as pressure builds

It took nearly 30 hours for the Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria to report full primary results after polls closed on Tuesday. While that seemed bad enough, it was a sudden announcement on Saturday night, five days later, that her office discovered an additional 10,000 uncounted mail-in ballots that caused pressure for her resignation to build.

Harris County was the only county of out 254 to take more than 24 hours to count votes and the only county to stumble upon thousands of lost votes, but these weren’t the only problems with the county’s elections.

From the moment polls opened on Election Day, issues abound.

Voters looking for polling locations were directed to thumb through a 16-page document and find a location in a zip code that seemed nearest to them because the county’s poll locator tool was malfunctioning. If you were lucky enough to find a location, it might not have been processing votes for your party because of a lack of polling staff or faulty machines that they couldn’t get to work.

If you made it through all of those hurdles, you had to hope that your vote was cast because many locations were using the incorrect sized paper for the ballot machines leading to a number of races on the bottom of the ballot to be cut off and their votes not recorded.

It truly is unbelievable to think that in 2022, following a year of Democrats calling Republicans racist and claiming they were trying to suppress the vote, that this could happen, and citizens lined up to tell them.

At the first Commissioners Court meeting since the debacle, poll workers, citizens, and candidates lined up to lodge their complaints. Activist and poll worker Tomaro Bell reminded the court how she testified before them when they were considering hiring the Administrator and told them it was a bad idea. “First off, if you’ll remember, when you all hired her, I came here and I spoke and I told y’all don’t do that it was the wrong thing to do,” she said.

Republican nominee for County Treasurer Kyle Scott said, “It is important to highlight the financial indicators of waste…in 2018, it cost us $3.4 million to run the elections, in 2022 $13.6 million, which equates to a 282% increase at a cost to the county.”

He continued, “in 2018, it was $1.48 per registered voter, in 2022 it was $5.48 voter.”

This all came before the Elections Administrator issued a statement saying, “Today I am submitting my resignation effective July 1.”

The problem is with her July 1 effective date for resignation, this means she will still oversee the May 7 special election for House District 147 to replace State Rep. Garnet Coleman, municipal and school district elections, and the runoff elections scheduled for May, which doesn’t leave voters feeling very confident.

 When people protest giving power to unelected bureaucrats, this is why. Prior to the creation of this office, if voters didn't like the way elections were conducted they had a remedy, vote the County Clerk or the County Tax Assessor-Collector out.

Now, the repercussions and remedies are mostly in the hands of County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the only member of the Court who sits on the Elections committee and decides the fate and future of Elections Administrators.

Leading up to this election, county officials tirelessly blamed Senate Bill 1, last year's voting bill, for every issue that cropped up. During the Election Day meltdown, they blamed voters.

Not only has the Elections Administrator failed to efficiently conduct an election, but she can't accept the blame for her office's failures and that's why she should resign or be fired. Election duties should be returned to the elected offices intended to conduct them, the County Clerk and Harris County Tax Assessor Collector.

Charles Blain is president of Urban Reform.