With November approaching, Harris County has yet to pick a new election administrator
With outgoing Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria's resignation going into effect Friday, Beth Stevens, chief director of voting for the county, will become the interim administrator until the new hire begins, which Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said is likely to be Aug.
1. The new administrator’s appointment will be voted on at a later meeting after the selected candidate meets a residency requirementThe commission was slated to hold a closed-door executive session to interview and take “possible action” to name the administrator at Monday’s meeting. Both finalists have prior experience running elections and are located out of state, according to Hidalgo.Longoria resigns as Harris County elections chief, takes the blame for bungled primary electionsThe new administrator will run his or her first Harris County election at a time when voters are learning how to use new machines, the county could see record voter turnout for a midterm election and new state laws have changed the rules regarding partisan poll watchers, said Renée Cross, senior director of the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. "This person had better be ready to work on little sleep and better have some thick skin. Partisans are going to be coming after this person. The Republican commissioners don't believe we should have this position and the only person who has held it had considerable difficulty. So, this person is going to be coming in under some pretty strained circumstances," Cross said. While some Harris County voters have experience using the new machines from this year's primary election, the majority of voters in November will be using the machines for the first time, Cross said. To operate Harris County’s new machines, voters must load sheets of paper into the machines. In the March primary, complications arose when damaged paper ballots led to"All of these variables are setting it up to be a challenging voting season,” Cross said. “However, due to the polarization we see now, I think people are going to dig in and say 'I'm going to vote. I'm going to make sure my vote is counted.'" Despite the list of challenges facing the new elections administrator, there is reason for optimism, according to Remi Garza, president of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators and the elections administrator in Cameron County. "With an organization such as Harris County I would imagine there are plenty of individuals in place that are moving the things that need to be moved forward at this point in the election,” Garza said. “You should start selecting your polling locations and your early voting sites, determining the hours and then preparing to put that into operation in November."Elections administrators in Texas are preparing for an influx of new poll watchers, Garza said. "We're expecting to see a lot of new individuals volunteer to be poll watchers for candidates and campaigns," Garza said."As long as they come in taking the necessary state training and they come in from the perspective of observing what is happening and not trying to influence what is happening at a polling place, I think everything should be fine." The Harris County Election Commission is made up of five members: both local party chairs, the county clerk, the county judge and the county tax assessor-collector. Before Commissioners Court created the, the county clerk and tax assessor-collector managed elections in Harris County. “We are remaining vigilant during the search process for a new replacement. I have concerns about the short amount of time to prepare for the November election, but I am cautiously optimistic that we’ll have a more experienced person in charge," said Cindy Siegel, chair of the Harris County Republican Party. Texas Republicans sued Harris County on the eve of early voting in 2020 in hopes of tossing out 127,000 ballots cast using
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