Texas Lege Well Into Annual WTF Season

Oh it's bad.

The Texas state Legislature — that august institution that the sainted Molly Ivins liked to call the "national laboratory of bad government" — has been up to its usual madness lately. Yesterday, the state Senate passed a bill that would allow Gov. Greg Abbott's handpicked secretary of state to overturn elections in Harris County, the Democratic stronghold where Houston lives, but not in any other county in the state.

The bill targeting Harris County was a big priority for Texas Republicans, who insist that they were robbed of their rightful victories in Harris County when about 20 of the county's 728 polling places ran out of paper for ballots. A Houston Chronicle analysis showed that was no evidence of systematic voter disenfranchisement, and more importantly, no evidence that the polling place glitches would have changed the outcome of the election.

But it made Republicans mighty mad, and they're sure they wuz robbed, so they introduced SB 1993 , which would authorize the secretary of state to order that elections get a do-over in "a county with a population of 2.7 million or more," of which Texas has exactly one: Harris County, which in recent years has trended increasingly Democratic, which oughta be illegal. The population threshold is just a skosh over Dallas County's 2.58 million, how about that? But Dallas delivers for the GOP, so it's not a problem.

SB 1993 would allow the state secretary of state to order new elections if at least two percent of the polling places in Harris County run out of ballots, and if additional ballots weren't delivered to those polling places within an hour. Fun fact: 20 polling places is 2.7 percent of the total in Harris County. And here's the fun part! The secretary doesn't need firm evidence of ballot shortages, but can order a do-over simply "if the secretary has good cause to believe" there were problems.

The costs of running the new elections would, of course, be borne by Harris County taxpayers.

 One of the bill's co authors, state Sen. Mayes Middleton (R), whose Galveston district is partly in Harris County, insisted that "There is no reason, there is no excuse why we can’t competently run our elections and have adequate ballot paper," which is both A: true and B: not really much excuse to allow the overturning of an election based on a partisan election commissar's hunch.

During debate on the bill Monday, Democratic state Sen. Royce West asked Middleton about that: "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?”

Middleton dodged the question about the prospects for partisan fuckery, and insisted that "overturn" is just such an unfair word:

"I would disagree about overturning — you’re calling a new election so voters get to vote again. [...] You get the opportunity to vote again. This is very different from the way you are describing it."

Another Democrat, state Sen. Borris Miles of Houston — so obviously he's biased — suggested that singling out Harris County for special loving care from Greg Abbott's appointed Secretary of State Jane Nelson might be a tad problematic, asking Middleton, "Does that seem kind of biased to you? We're just going to pick on my county?"

Middleton was shocked, shocked, because after all Harris County was the only county out of 254 in which any problems happened in 2022, probably:

“You’ve got to supply enough ballot paper,” Middleton said. “There’s no reason that should happen again. It’s really a simple thing. You just deliver enough paper.”

Middleton did say Monday that he'd be open to adding an amendment to cover more counties, but somehow that never made it into the bill that was passed Tuesday.

For all the good it would do, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee observed that SB 1993 and another election bill that would only affect Harris County are using "election integrity" as an excuse to tinker with the vote in a Democratic stronghold:

“They are not about making elections better,” Menefee said. “They are about targeting the largest county in the state, which is led by people of color. Laws that attack only one county are not only bad public policy, but also violate the Texas Constitution.”

County Commissioner Adrian Garcia called Middleton’s bill “election denial,” framing it as an attempt to overturn election results that Republicans don’t like.

“Call it for what it is. They’d rather be able to rig results than try to win fair and square,” Garcia said.

Well sure, guys, but Republicans have the overwhelming majority in both houses of the Lege, so Harris County will just have to get a lesson in what what democracy is all about.

[ Democracy Docket / Houston Chronicle / Houston Chronicle (gift link)]

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