Texas

Texas Election Chief Speaks Out on Conspiracy “Nuts,” Death Threats, and President Biden’s Legitimacy | Michael Hardy/Texas Monthly

Take pity on John Scott. In October 2021, Governor Greg Abbott appointed the Fort Worth attorney as Secretary of State, Texas’s top elections official. He immediately found himself in the hot seat, targeted by voting rights activists aggrieved by what they saw as Republican-led voter suppression and by conspiracy theorists inflamed by former president Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election. Scott, who had previously served under Abbott as deputy attorney general for civil litigation and COO of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, told Texas Monthly at the time that his top priority was “bringing the temperature down.” This proved harder than he anticipated. Scott’s first major task was to conduct a “full forensic audit” of the 2020 general election in the two largest Democrat-led counties, Dallas and Harris, and the two largest Republican-led counties, Collin and Tarrant. The audit was demanded by Trump—even though he won Texas by more than five percentage points—and had been agreed to, less than nine hours after Trump issued his demand, by the Secretary of State office (the top post was then vacant). The effort immediately drew scorn from both liberals, who denounced it as a capitulation to election deniers, and Trump himself, who complained that limiting the audit to four counties was “weak.”

Full Article: Texas Election Chief Wants to Tamp Down Election Conspiracy Theories

Texas: Conspiracy theorists and 16-hour days: Inside the stress elections officials face ahead of the midterms | Pooja Salhotra/The Texas Tribune

Since Todd Stallings began working in Nacogdoches County’s elections office in 2003, his responsibilities have grown exponentially. So has his stress. First came a shift toward digital voting records, along with new state legislation that created more duties for elections officials. Then, accusations of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential race stoked the public’s fear about election integrity. And conspiracy theories about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election have led to heightened scrutiny. Although election deniers at one point concentrated their efforts in states like Arizona and Georgia, supporters of former President Donald Trump have since sent a barrage of public information requests to elections offices nationwide, including those in the smallest and reddest Texas counties, where Trump won handsomely. So on top of fulfilling their normal job duties, such as preparing ballots and updating polling information, officials are fielding questions from concerned voters. The increased demands have left some workers burned out. According to the secretary of state’s office, 30% of Texas elections workers have left their jobs since 2020. In one county, the entire elections administrator’s office resigned. “There’s just more and more to do,” Stallings said. “Which is fine, but it’s when there’s stuff we aren’t prepared for — that’s what kind of turns everyone into a panic.”

Full Article: Texas elections administrators face growing scrutiny from public | The Texas Tribune

Texas elections-monitoring group forced to name source of hacked poll worker data | Cameron Langford/Courthouse News Service

Counsel for a Texas voter fraud conspiracy group, in open court Thursday, reluctantly provided the name of a man who set off an FBI investigation into a software company’s compromised U.S. poll worker data. Eugene Yu, CEO and founder of Konnech Inc., a Michigan election logistics software purveyor, was supposed to be at a hearing Thursday in Houston federal court for his company’s lawsuit against True the Vote, a Texas nonprofit that backs Donald Trump’s claims voter fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election. But Yu was in Michigan working out a bail agreement following his arrest Tuesday “on suspicion of theft of personal identifying information” by investigators with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, with help from local police. According to District Attorney George Gascón, Konnech has a contract with LA County that mandates it keep election worker information on secure servers in the United States, and a probe by his office found probable cause to believe Konnech was storing the data on servers in China. Yu’s bail deal stipulates he must report to LA County by Oct. 14 to face charges. Konnech’s software helps local governments manage poll workers and coordinate allocation of equipment, it has nothing to do with registering voters or counting ballots, the company says.

Full Article: Texas elections-monitoring group forced to name source of hacked poll worker data | Courthouse News Service

Texas court confirms the AG can’t unilaterally prosecute election cases | Alejandro Serrano/The Texas Tribune

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton‘s last-ditch attempt to regain the power of his office to unilaterally prosecute election cases was rejected by the state’s highest criminal court Wednesday. The Court of Criminal Appeals instead upheld its previous ruling that says that the attorney general must get permission from local county prosecutors to pursue cases on issues like voter fraud. Paxton had been fighting to overturn that ruling as the issue of prosecuting election fraud has become fraught in recent years. Paxton sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and has aggressively pursued individual cases of fraud, outraging some voting rights advocates who see the punishments as too harsh for people who made honest mistakes. Last December, eight of the nine members on the all-GOP court struck down a law that previously allowed Paxton’s office to take on those cases without local consent. The court said the law violated the separation-of-powers clause in the Texas Constitution. In the aftermath, Paxton, joined by Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, led a political push to get the court to reconsider its decision, warning that it would allow cases of fraud to go unpunished. His office filed a motion asking the Court of Criminal Appeals to rehear the case, vacate its previous opinion and affirm an appellate court’s judgment, which was in his favor.

Full Article: Texas court confirms the AG can’t unilaterally prosecute election cases | The Texas Tribune

Texas: Election challenge disciplinary case dismissed against Attorney General’s top aide | James Barragán/The Texas Tribune

A district judge has thrown out the State Bar of Texas’ professional misconduct case against Brent Webster, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s top aide, for his work on a case that challenged the results of the 2020 presidential election. Judge John Youngblood, a judge in Milam County who was assigned to the case in Williamson County court, sided with an argument by Webster that said letting the case move forward would violate the state constitution’s separation of powers because the state bar, an agent of the judicial branch, would be limiting the actions of the attorney general’s office, which is part of the executive branch. “[T]he separation-of-powers doctrine deprives this Court of subject-matter jurisdiction,” Youngblood said in a brief letter. “To hold otherwise would stand for a limitation of the Attorney General’s broad power to file lawsuits on the State’s behalf, a right clearly supported by the Texas Constitution and recognized repeatedly by the Texas Supreme Court.” A spokesperson for the state bar said the body does not have comment on the dismissal and said no decision has been made on an appeal. Paxton is facing a similar lawsuit in Collin County, in which he has made the same argument to the court. The judge in Paxton’s case has made no ruling.

Full Article: Election challenge disciplinary case dismissed against Texas AG’s top aide | The Texas Tribune

Texas’ True the Vote sued, accused of defaming small election vendor | Natalie Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A defamation and computer fraud lawsuit filed this week against Texas-based True the Vote asks a judge to essentially determine whether the election integrity group’s campaign against a small election vendor constitutes slanderous lies or a participation in criminal acts. The suit was brought by Konnech Inc., a small elections logistics company based in Michigan. It alleges that True the Vote and its followers launched a stream of false and racist accusations against the company’s founder, forcing him and his family to flee their home in fear for their lives and damaging the company’s business. The suit cites True the Votes’ public claims that it hacked the company’s servers and accessed the personal information of nearly 2 million U.S. poll workers. In a rare move, the judge granted Konnech’s request for a temporary restraining order against Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, leaders of True the Vote, a nonprofit organization known for making allegations of voter fraud without evidence to support their claims. Judge Kenneth Hoyt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas found a “substantial likelihood” that Konnech would “suffer irreparable injury” without it. The order also prohibits True the Vote from accessing, or attempting to access, Konnech’s computers or disclosing any of the company’s data and orders the group to disclose more information about the alleged breach. Experts told Votebeat the damage done through the spread of conspiracy theories about election software companies such as Konnech by groups like True the Vote could impact the already limited tools available that help election officials hire, train and schedule election workers.

Full Article: Texas’ True the Vote sued, accused of defaming small election vendor | The Texas Tribune

Texas: What brought down one county’s entire elections department? It was something in the water. | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Last November’s sleepy constitutional amendment election nearly came to blows in Gillespie County, a central Texas county known for its vineyards. A volunteer poll watcher, whose aggressive behavior had rankled election workers all day, attempted to force his way into a secure ballot vault. The burly man was repeatedly blocked by a county elections staffer. Shouting ensued. “You can’t go in there,” the staffer, Terry Hamilton, insisted to the man, who towered over Hamilton. “We can see anything we want!” the poll watcher and his fellow election integrity activists yelled, according to an election worker who witnessed the scene. They accused Hamilton and Elections Administrator Anissa Herrera of a variety of violations of the state elections code, which they quoted, line by line. “Oh Lord, they can cite chapter and verse,” recalled Sue Bentch, a Fredericksburg election judge who saw the confrontation that night. “But you know, just as the devil can cite scripture for its own purposes it seemed to me that it was often cited out of context and misinterpreted.” “Finally, I called the sheriff’s officer,” said Bentch. The officer barred the activists from the vault. “Poor Terry was coming to fisticuffs.”

Full Article: What brought down one Texas county’s entire elections department? It was something in the water.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says ballots are public records right after elections | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat Texas

A legal opinion released by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last week will almost certainly throw county elections offices into chaos after November, experts say, exposing election clerks to possible criminal charges and materially reducing the security of every ballot cast in the state. Federal and state law require that ballots be kept secure for 22 months after an election to allow for recounts and challenges — a timeframe Texas counties have had set in place for decades. Paxton’s opinion, which doesn’t stem from any change to state law,  theoretically permits anyone —  an aggrieved voter, activist, or out-of-state entity — to request access to ballots as soon as the day after they are counted. Such requests have been used by activists all over the country as a way to “audit” election results. The opinion from Paxton doesn’t carry the force of law, but experts say it will almost certainly serve as the basis for a lawsuit by right-wing activists. The opinion has already impacted election administrators across the state, who told Votebeat that they’ve seen an onslaught of requests since Paxton released it. “[Paxton’s office wants] to throw a monkey wrench into the operations of vote counting, especially if they think they might lose, and Paxton is in a close race as far as I can tell,” said Linda Eads, a professor at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law and a former deputy attorney general for litigation for the state of Texas. She said she was “shocked” by the opinion.

Full Article: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says ballots are public records right after elections – Votebeat Texas – Nonpartisan local reporting on elections and voting

Texas: How do you run an election without elections department staff? Gillespie County in a bind | Megan Rodriguez/San Antonio Express-News

The elections administrator in Gillespie County, which includes Fredericksburg, is stepping down Tuesday over death threats, stalking and understaffing that followed the 2020 election, according to the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post. “I’m understaffed and underpaid and I’ve been asking for help for a while, and at some point, you just have to take care of yourself,”…

Texas: Threats against election workers occurring across state | Brian Kirkpatrick/Texas Public Radio

Threats against election administrators and county clerks are occurring throughout Texas as the mid-term election on Nov. 8 draws near. The threats are fueled by a tight governor’s contest and congressional races laced with intense partisan rhetoric and voter fraud misinformation. Voter turnout is expected to be increased by calls for gun control in the wake of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde this past May. The topic of abortion rights is also expected to send more voters to the polls after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade this summer. Voters will be looking to support like-minded candidates on both issues. Gillespie Elections Administrator Anissa Hererra and other office staff have resigned due to threats on social media that began after the 2020 election. Her last day on the job is Tuesday, Aug. 16. Election officials blame misinformation about voter fraud spread on social media across the country in the wake of the 2020 presidential election as contributing to the problem. The immediate past-president of the Texas Association of Election Administrators Remi Garza said he wants any election administrator or county clerk and other election workers in the state’s 254 counites speak up if they are threatened. “I hope they will speak out, so that others are aware of this activity so some common threats can be identified and maybe a wider solution can be achieved either through the legislature or through law enforcement,” said Garza, the Cameron County Elections Administrator.

Full Article: Threats against election workers occurring across Texas | TPR

Texas: Gillespie County elections admin resigns over death threats | Gabriel Romero/San Antonio Express-News

A Gillespie County employee is resigning from her job after dealing with death threats over the 2020 election, but she is not the first to leave. Gillespie County elections administrator Anissa Herrera told the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post that she will be leaving her position on Tuesday, August 16. “The year 2020 was when I got the death threats,” Herrera said to the Standard-Radio Post. “It was enough that I reached out to our county attorney, and it was suggested that I forward it to FPD (Fredericksburg Police Department) and the sheriff’s office.” Herrera was an inaugural member of the elections office and was with Gillespie County for almost a decade, according to the report. She was the elections clerk under the county clerk’s office before she was named elections administrator in 2019. After the 2020 election, Herrera’s tenure took a turn for the worse. She told the Standard-Radio Post that she was threatened, stalked, and was called out on social media. According to the report, other people in the elections department have left for similar reasons.

Full Article: Gillespie County elections admin resigns over death threats

Texas election workers saw increased threats after 2020 voter fraud claims | Eric Neugeborn/The Texas Tribune

A rise in election-related misinformation has led to increased threats and intimidation of election workers in Texas and other states, according to a report released Thursday by a U.S. House committee. A Texas elections administrator from Tarrant County told the committee there was a social media call to “hang him when convicted for fraud and let his lifeless body hang in public until maggots drip out of his mouth.” The official’s home address was leaked and he received messages threatening his children, including one that said “I think we should end your bloodline.” That official, Heider Garcia, was the target of a smear campaign by allies of former President Donald Trump and prominent right-wing media personalities, purporting a falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him due to widespread voter fraud. The claim of widespread voter fraud in the election has been repeatedly debunked, and several of Trump’s own aides have stated that the election was fair. “To this day, not a single person or entity has been held accountable for the impact this whole situation had on my family and myself,” Garcia wrote in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year.

Full Article: Texas election workers saw increased threats after 2020 voter fraud claims | The Texas Tribune

Texas: Harris County Commissioners Court OKs lawsuit over random state election audit | Dug Begley/Houston Chronicle

Harris County Commissioners Court, by a 3-2 partisan vote, agreed to explore legal options, including a possible lawsuit, to challenge the results of a random drawing by the Texas Secretary of State’s Office that means another round of election scrutiny for Texas’ largest county. “It ought to be the state of Texas that is audited,” said Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who proposed the lawsuit. “This place has gone back to the bad old days.” Harris County learned last week it was one of two large counties chosen for an election audit by state officials, under new procedures lawmakers approved for election scrutiny. It is the second audit of Harris County, after another approved weeks following the 2020 general election. Procedures for the upcoming audit, which covers both the 2020 and 2022 elections, have not been outlined by the state yet, said Beth Stevens, Harris County’s interim elections administrator.

Full Article: A random Texas election audit: Commissioners Court OKs lawsuit

Texas: Lawsuit demands end to electronic voting machines in Lubbock County | James Clark/KLBK

Five people sued Lubbock County Commissioners Monday to stop the use of electronic voting systems. They also demanded “proper investigations and reconciliation” of elections in the last two years. The lawsuit demands, among other things, that Lubbock County “implement a precinct level hand-marked paper ballot and hand counting system.” The county already approved machines that keep a paper backup system in addition to the electronic records. The preliminary statement in the lawsuit, filed by Ashley Johnson, Beverly D. Burnett, Royce C. Lewis, Laura Lynne Phillips and Sheryl Ann Sherman – all representing themselves to be Lubbock County registered voters – said, “This action is not an election contest case.” The basic claim was that Lubbock County uses Hart InterCivic voting machines. The lawsuit also claimed these voting machines do not meet state standards and they are vulnerable to so-called “black box” antics by nations such as China.

Full Article: Lawsuit demands end to electronic voting machines in Lubbock County | KLBK | KAMC | EverythingLubbock.com

Texas will audit 2022 midterm election results in four counties | Philip Jankowski/Dallas Morning News

The Texas secretary of state’s office selected the state’s most populated county and three others Thursday for an audit of election returns that will include the 2022 midterms. Cameron, Guadalupe, Eastland and Harris counties were picked at random under a provision of the 2021 omnibus election law that created the audit process. Cameron and Harris were chosen from a pool of Texas’ 18 counties with populations of 300,000 or more and Guadalupe and Eastland from counties with fewer than 300,000 people. Since the beginning of the year, the secretary of state’s office has been building a forensic audit department within its ranks. In November, Gov. Greg Abbott and top Republicans at the Legislature signed off on sending $4 million to the secretary of state’s office to staff up the division. The audits will begin immediately after November’s midterms and will also examine other non-primary elections, such as the May 7 vote on amendments to the Texas Constitution. The audit process came about after the Texas Legislature passed a sweeping election law, Senate Bill 1, in 2021 in reaction to fears over election security stoked by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud. Republicans led the charge in passing the bill over the objections of House Democrats, who took desperate measures to block its passage by stealthily walking out on 2021′s regular session and then much more visibly fleeing the state during a special session. Their efforts failed as several House Democrats quietly returned to Austin and allowed the House to gavel in with a quorum present.

Full Article: Texas will audit 2022 midterm election results in four counties

Texas GOP’s proposed election reforms would restrict mail-in voting for seniors, early voting | Jill Ament/Texas Standard

Leaders of Texas’ Republican Party continue to promote false claims that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from former President Donald Trump – and during the Texas GOP convention in Houston last month, members overwhelmingly voted to make election reforms the party’s No. 1 priority. As the Houston Chronicle reports, this means they want the state to adopt laws in the 2023 legislative session that would further restrict voting by shortening the early voting period from two weeks to one and by no longer letting any senior vote by mail. “They’re going off of this assumption that there’s more fraud in early voting and in mail voting,” said Jeremy Wallace, a political reporter at the Chronicle’s Austin bureau. “That is based on some of the unproven claims from former President Donald Trump about how elections went in other states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, and the Texas Republican Party has kind of grabbed that baton and are pushing it in Texas, even though there’s been no evidence that the expanded early voting time that we have here in Texas has resulted in additional fraud.” Under legislation that would limit seniors from voting by mail, instead of letting anyone over the age of 65 have the option, as they have for decades, seniors would instead only be able to do so with an excuse. Out of the million voters who utilized mail-in voting for the 2020 presidential election, 850,000 were 65 and up, Wallace said. But Republicans’ new proposal would limit absentee voting to those who are in the military, have a disability or are out of the country.

Full Article: Texas GOP’s proposed election reforms would restrict mail-in voting for seniors, early voting | Texas Standard

Texas: Crystal Mason’s illegal voting conviction must be reconsidered, court says | Alexa Ura/The Texas Tribune

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has told a lower appeals court to take another look at the controversial illegal voting conviction of Crystal Mason, who was given a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while she was on supervised release for a federal conviction. The state’s court of last resort for criminal matters on Wednesday ruled a lower appeals court had wrongly upheld Mason’s conviction by concluding that it was “irrelevant” to Mason’s prosecution that she did not know she was ineligible to cast a ballot. The ruling opens the door for Mason’s conviction to ultimately be overturned. Mason’s lawyers turned to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after the Tarrant County-based Second Court of Appeals found that her knowledge that she was on supervised release, and therefore ineligible to vote, was sufficient for an illegal voting conviction. Mason has said she did not know she was ineligible to vote and wouldn’t have knowingly risked her freedom. On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the lower court had “erred by failing to require proof that [Mason] had actual knowledge that it was a crime for her to vote while on supervised release.” They sent the case back down with instructions for the lower court to “evaluate the sufficiency” of the evidence against Mason. “I am pleased that the court acknowledged issues with my conviction, and am ready to defend myself against these cruel charges,” Mason said in a statement released Wednesday. “My life has been upended for what was, at worst, an innocent misunderstanding of casting a provisional ballot that was never even counted. I have been called to this fight for voting rights and will continue to serve my community.”

Full Article: Crystal Mason’s illegal voting conviction must be reconsidered, court says | The Texas Tribune

Texas: 12.38% of mail ballots were rejected in March primary | Ashley Lopez/NPR

A total of 24,636 mail-in ballots were rejected throughout Texas in the March 1 primary election, the Texas secretary of state’s office said Wednesday. That’s a 12.38% rejection rate — far higher than in previous contests. Local election officials, as well as voting rights advocates, have said many voters were tripped up by a GOP-backed law that went into effect late last year. James Slattery, a senior state attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, says these final figures show Texas’ new voting law, known as Senate Bill 1, was “catastrophic for democracy” in the state. “The rejection rate went up by a factor of 12 since the last election,” he said. “The only reason that the rejection rate soared this high is that Senate Bill 1 imposed this new ID requirement and it is disenfranchising eligible voters.” Under SB 1, voters have to provide a partial Social Security number or driver’s license number on their mail ballot application — as well as on the return envelope. The ID number they provide has to match what’s on their voter registration record. Many voters either completely missed the new ID portion of the return envelope or had mismatched IDs, local officials said.

Full Article: 12.38% of Texas mail ballots were rejected in March primary : NPR

Texas: Mail Ballot Rejections Surge, With Signs of a Race Gap | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Full Article: Mail Ballot Rejections Surge in Texas, With Signs of a Race Gap – The New York Times

Texas mail ballot rejections soar under new restrictions | Paul J. Weber and Acacia Coronado/Associated Press

Texas threw out mail votes at an abnormally high rate during the nation’s first primary of 2022, rejecting nearly 23,000 ballots outright under tougher voting rules that are part of a broad campaign by Republicans to reshape American elections, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. Roughly 13% of mail ballots returned in the March 1 primary were discarded and uncounted across 187 counties in Texas. While historical primary comparisons are lacking, the double-digit rejection rate would be far beyond what is typical in a general election, when experts say anything above 2% is usually cause for attention. “My first reaction is ‘yikes,’” said Charles Stewart III, director of the Election Data and Science Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It says to me that there’s something seriously wrong with the way that the mail ballot policy is being administered.” Republicans promised new layers of voting rules would make it “easier to vote and harder to cheat.” But the final numbers recorded by AP lay bare the glaring gulf between that objective and the obstacles, frustration and tens of thousands of uncounted votes resulting from tighter restrictions and rushed implementation.

Full Article: Texas mail ballot rejections soar under new restrictions | AP News

Texas: Harris County election chief resigns as political parties demand answers over fumbled vote count | Alexa Ura/The Texas Tribune

With counting holdups and missed ballots marring what amounted to a low-turnout election,Harris County’s election administrator has announced she is resigning amid pressure from local leaders of both political parties to explain what went wrong in last week’s primary. Houston-area voters saw relatively few issues on election day, but days later the state’s largest county faced a 10,000 vote-sized problem. Over the weekend, Harris County election officials announced that thousands of mail-in ballots — 6,000 Democratic and 4,000 Republican — had been mistakenly left off the county’s vote tally. This came after unofficial results were significantly delayed in part because more than a thousand ballot sheets were damaged as voters tried out the county’s new voting machines. On Tuesday afternoon, the Houston Chronicle reported that Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat, said she wanted a change in leadership and intended to replace election administrator Isabel Longoria. Shortly after, Longoria announced she would step down on July 1. Her resignation came after Harris County Democrats called for a comprehensive post-election review, while Republicans — regular adversaries of the county’s Democratic leadership — simultaneously sued the county and demanded Longoria’s resignation.

Full Article: Parties seek answers after Harris County fumbles election vote count | The Texas Tribune

Many Texas voting locations did not open because of staff shortages | Reese Oxner and Uriel J. Garcia/The Texas Tribune

Several voting locations throughout the state were unable to open Tuesday during the primary election because of election staff shortages, causing some to open later in the day and others to shut down completely. Locations in Dallas, Tarrant and Hidalgo counties reported missing either a Republican or Democratic Party election judge. These staff members are appointed by their respective parties to oversee polling sites. If one of the parties’ judges is absent, the polling site cannot operate. That’s because by state law, no polling site can serve only one party, Tarrant County elections administrator Heider Garcia told The Texas Tribune. Garcia said it was difficult to recruit polling staff this year, but he couldn’t say exactly why. “I honestly can’t tell you why people are not motivated,” he said. “Was it pay? Was it lack of interest? Was it stress over possible penalties? I mean, I don’t know. We need to reach out to the people who said no.” During last year’s legislative sessions, Texas lawmakers created new criminal penalties for election workers accused of interfering with poll watchers’ activities. The new rules were enacted after many Republican officials echoed former President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election, despite there being no evidence. Election officials and voting rights groups warned legislators that the new restrictions could have a potential chilling effect on election workers. James Slattery, a senior staff attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project, pointed to the new voting laws, often referred to as Senate Bill 1, as a possible deterrent that kept election judges from participating in Tuesday’s elections.

Full Article: Many Texas voting locations did not open because of staff shortages | The Texas Tribune

Texas: Travis County not saying what led to website crash on election night | Ryan Autullo Sarah Asch/Austin American-Statesman

As Travis County voters fired up their digital devices Tuesday night to check the results of the county’s Democratic and Republican primaries, they encountered what would be the most perplexing development of the evening: There were no results to be found. As results from the early voting period began to flow in from other major Texas counties, in Travis County — home to some of the world’s most powerful technology corporations — there was nothing but an error message on the Travis County clerk’s office elections website. “Error establishing a database connection,” the site showed. The website remained down for about 40 minutes, at which time the clerk’s office said on social media that its information technology department was working to publish the results on Travis County’s main website. About 10 minutes later, after nearly an hour with voters and candidates not knowing what was happening in the races, the results were finally posted. It’s still not clear what caused the problem — no Travis County officials would discuss it or answer questions on Wednesday, despite multiple requests for comment from the American-Statesman. Travis County spokesman Hector Nieto referred questions to the county clerk’s office. Victoria Hinojosa, an executive assistant in the clerk’s office who handles media requests, did not respond to multiple messages left Wednesday.

Full Article: Travis County not saying what led to website crash on election night

Texas firm Authentix backs GOP push for high-tech ‘fraud-proof’ ballots | Rosalind S. Helderman/The Washington Post

Full Article: Texas firm Authentix backs GOP push for high-tech ‘fraud-proof’ ballots – The Washington Post

Texas: Advocates Struggle to Overcome New Voting Barriers | Laura Morales/Texas Observer

Before the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature passed a restrictive new voting measure last year, Molly Broadway was adept at navigating the state’s voting landscape. She had spent six years with Disability Rights Texas, an Austin-based nonprofit, specializing in advising voters on how to cast their ballot (regardless of party affiliation). That same confidence is hard to find nowadays. As the state’s first election after the passage of Senate Bill 1 looms, Broadway is dogged by uncertainty. SB 1 was a backlash to the pandemic-era accommodations several counties—especially Harris County—instituted in 2020, which saw record-high voter participation rates. The law prohibits counties from proactively sending mail-in ballot applications or implementing 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting. It also creates a slew of requirements for mail-in voting applications. “We’re trying to answer their questions and provide as much information as we can, as it’s being made available to us, but it can be challenging,” Broadway said. “And people have a lot of questions and concerns about it.” She said the changes introduce an “intimidation factor” for potential voters that could turn some off from voting at all. “Unless you are paying attention to this issue day in and day out, it is easy to get swept up by it,” she said. At the same time, newly gerrymandered political maps in Texas appear to water down the voting power of people of color, despite the fact that they made up 95 percent of the state’s population growth in the last decade.

Full Article: Advocates Struggle to Overcome New Voting Barriers in Texas

Texas: Hundreds of mail-in ballots are being returned to voters because they don’t comply with new voting law | Alexa Ura/The Texas Tribune

Stricter voting rules enacted by Republican lawmakers last year continue to foil Texans trying to vote by mail in the upcoming primary, with hundreds of completed ballots being initially rejected for not meeting the state’s new identification requirements. The bulk of mail-in ballots have yet to arrive at elections offices, but local officials are already reporting that a significant number are coming in without the newly required ID information. As of Wednesday, election officials in Harris County alone had flagged 1,360 mail-in ballots to be sent back to voters — 40% of the mail-in ballots returned up to that point — because they lacked an ID number. Under the state’s new rules, officials cannot accept ballots without the ID information on the return envelopes containing the ballot and must mail them back if there’s enough time for the voter to send back a corrected envelope. “We’ll see how many we get back,” said Isabel Longoria, the Harris County elections administrator. “That’s our big question mark right now: Are voters going to go through the extra step to correct it?” The new ID requirements are the earliest rule changes to kick in under the law that Republican lawmakers enacted last year to further tighten voting procedures in the state. The law, known as SB 1, ratchets up the state’s already strict rules for voting by mail by requiring absentee voters to include a state identification number like a driver’s license number, or — if they don’t have a driver’s license — a partial Social Security number, both when requesting a mail-in ballot and when returning a completed ballot. Those numbers must match information in a voter’s record for ballot requests to be accepted and votes to be counted.

Full Article: New Texas voting rules cause rejection of hundreds of mail-in ballots | The Texas Tribune

Texas’ wasteful election audit leads to some easy predictions | Rick Casey/San Antonio Report

It may have been the last official act of 2021 by any Texas state official above the level of a state trooper. Secretary of State John Scott’s office on New Year’s Eve released findings from the first stage of the “forensic audit” of the 2020 election. It is an ancient tradition of political practice to release bad news at a time when it is least likely to cause ripples, and nothing fits that bill like New Year’s Eve. Not only are news organizations on holiday staffing, but who watches TV news on New Year’s Eve? For that matter, who is alertly reading the newspaper the next morning? What was the bad news? It was the good news that neither Russian hackers nor Venezuelan-based voting machine companies had manipulated or manufactured hundreds of thousands of Texans’ votes to elect Joe Biden president. It was hardly even news at all in that it is exactly what local officials had been saying for more than a year. But for conspiracy theorists it was, to say the least, disappointing. Perhaps the timing of the release was focused on one particular news consumer, a man who was presumed to be partying New Years Eve and golfing the next day at Mar-a-Lago.  Donald Trump has a special interest in the audit, which examined election data from four urban Texas counties: Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant. State officials announced the audit in September a few hours after he released a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott pushing for it despite the fact that Trump had carried Texas by nearly 6 points. Since Abbott had recently appointed Scott secretary of state, it’s safe to assume that the governor was involved in generating the audit. Abbott already had put on the agenda and signed into law a special session bill that mandates such audits after future elections.

Full Article: Texas’ wasteful election audit leads to some easy predictions

Texas secretary of state’s partial audit of 2020 election finds few issues | Alexa Ura and Allyson Waller/The Texas Tribune

The Texas secretary of state’s office has released the first batch of results from its review into the 2020 general election, finding few issues despite repeated, unsubstantiated claims by GOP leaders casting doubts on the integrity of the electoral system. The first phase of the review, released New Year’s Eve, highlighted election data from four counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Collin — that showed few discrepancies between electronic and hand counts of ballots in a sample of voting precincts. Those partial manual counts made up a significant portion of the results produced by the secretary of state, which largely focused on routine voter roll maintenance and post-election processes that were already in place before the state launched what it has labeled as a “full forensic audit.” On Friday, Samuel Taylor, a spokesperson with the secretary of state’s office, said the review was needed “to provide clarity on what issues need to be resolved for the next elections.” But Remi Garza, president of the Texas Association of Election Administrators, said there wasn’t anything in the review’s first set of results that raised any alarms for him. “There doesn’t seem to be anything too far out of the ordinary with respect to the information that’s provided,” said Garza, who serves as the election administrator in Cameron County. “… I hope nobody draws any strong conclusions one way or the other with respect to the information that’s been provided. I think it’s just very straightforward, very factual and will ultimately play a part in the final conclusions that are drawn once the second phase is completed.”

Texas: Phil Waldron’s Unlikely Role in Pushing Baseless Election Claims | Alan Feuer/The New York Times

Full Article: Phil Waldron’s Unlikely Role in Pushing Baseless Election Claims – The New York Times

Editorial: The real cost of the Texas elections audit | Dallas Morning News

In the days after Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a “forensic audit” of the November 2020 elections, the elections administrators of the four targeted counties were left scratching their heads. Officials in Dallas and Collin counties told us in late September that they were waiting to receive instructions from the Texas secretary of state. Tarrant and Harris counties were also in the dark. We condemned the audit at that time, though we hoped there would be no follow-through. We thought it might be a superficial stunt to appease President Donald Trump, and nothing more. But our news colleagues recently reported that Secretary of State John Scott sent a long list of requested documents to the four counties. And last month, the governor and GOP legislative leaders shifted $4 million from the state prison system to the office of the secretary of state to pay for the audit. Abbott is making a mistake by pressing on with this forensic audit — whatever it is that GOP leaders mean by “forensic.” The myth of widespread voter fraud is red meat for Republican primary voters but far less palatable to moderate suburban voters in a general election, a political calculus that the governor must make as he campaigns for another term and seeks to carry down-ballot Republicans with him. Above all, this obsession with election audits is eroding democracy for all of us, no matter our political affiliation.

Full Article: The real cost of the Texas elections audit