How Many Registered Voters In Harris County Tx

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A potential nightmare for Texas Republicans began to materialize early on Tuesday, taking the grade of tens of thousands of voters lined up at the polls in Harris County.

Past solar day'southward end, the number of ballots cast on the first day of early voting in Houston and its suburbs had shattered all records.

The early numbers are almost certainly bad news for Texas Republicans. Control of the White House depends on Republican domination of Texas, which in turn relies on containing a voting surge in the nation's third most populous county, which is only solidifying as a Democratic stronghold.

Much of the Democrats' dream of turning Texas blue is pinned on ramping up turnout in Houston and other Texas cities where voters, many of whom are people of color, trend heavily their way.

Voting in Texas

• When was the last mean solar day to register to vote?

  The deadline to register to vote in the 2020 full general ballot was October. 5. Check if yous're registered to vote hither. If not, yous'll need to fill up out and submit an application, which you tin request hither or download hither.

• When can I vote early on?

  Early voting for the 2020 general election runs from October. 13 to October. 30. Voters can cast ballots at whatever polling location in the county where they are registered to vote during early voting. Election Day is Nov. iii.

• How will voting be different because of the pandemic?

  In general, polling locations will accept guidelines in place for social distancing and regular cleaning. Several counties will offering ballot marking devices so voters avert contact with election equipment. Poll workers will likely exist wearing face up masks and other protective equipment, simply masks will not be required for voters.

• How practise I know if I qualify to vote by mail service?

  Texas is 1 of just a few states that hasn't opened up mail-in voting to any voter concerned well-nigh getting COVID-19 at a polling place. Y'all tin can observe eligibility requirements and review other questions about voting by postal service here.

• Are polling locations the aforementioned on Election Day as they are during early voting?

  Not always. You'll want to check for open polling locations with your local elections role before yous head out to vote. Additionally, you tin ostend with your county elections office whether Election Day voting is restricted to locations in your designated precinct or if you can cast a ballot at any polling place.

• Can I still vote if I take COVID-19?

  Yes. If you have been diagnosed with COVID-nineteen or are exhibiting symptoms, consider requesting an emergency mail service-in ballot or using curbside voting. Contact your county elections function for more details virtually both options.

• See our voter guide

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In a bitterly contested ballot, overlaid with the fears and risks of an uncontrolled pandemic, Harris County has become a example study in raw politics and partisan efforts to manipulate voter turnout. Republican leaders and activists have furiously worked the levers of power, churning out lawsuits, unsubstantiated specters of voter fraud and official state orders in their bid to limit voters' options during the pandemic.

Their ability hemmed in past land officials, Houston Democrats have launched a robust attempt to make voting as easy every bit possible, tripling the number of early and Election Twenty-four hour period polling locations and increasing the county's election budget from $4 one thousand thousand in 2016 to $33 million this fall. They turn down GOP claims that making voting easier carries inherent risks of widespread voter fraud.

The battle lines were best-selling in one of the many lawsuits Republican leaders and activists filed in the past few months attempting to rein in Harris County's efforts to aggrandize voting access.

"Every bit Texas goes, so as well will the rest of the country. As Harris County goes, so too will Texas," the GOP lawsuit read. "If President Trump loses Texas, it would exist difficult, if not impossible, for him to exist reelected."

Local political observers hold the writing is on the wall: Nearly of Houston's residents are people of color, its local leaders are Democrats, and it is the fastest-growing county in the state, according to recent census data.

"This canton looks like what Texas is going to wait similar in x years, and they know that if Harris County can become solidly entrenched in the Democratic Party, it's just going to disperse from at that place," said Melanye Price, endowed professor of political science at Prairie View A&1000 University and a Harris Canton voter. "I think in some means they're going to take more of an influence, and the governor knows that, and the attorney full general knows that, and that is why they've decided to hobble them at every turn."

It'southward no coincidence, Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins said, that GOP efforts to tightly enforce Texas voting laws — amongst the nation's most restrictive — target an of import Democratic stronghold and ane of the country's well-nigh diverse cities.

"If you lot look at [election results] for Harris County, you see a very clear trend," Hollins said. "If I were in the business of trying to suppress Democratic votes, I know where I would target."

Harris County residents wait in line at the Bayland Community Center in Houston on the offset day of early voting . Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune

Harris County going bluer

With Harris Canton slipping from its grasp, the GOP'southward road to political safety in Texas and across grows more perilous as Democratic candidates from the top to the bottom of the election siphon more and more votes from the county'south two.four million registered voters.

In 2008, nearly 600,000 Democratic votes were cast in the presidential election in Harris County, edging out Republican votes for the starting time time in recent history. In 2016, the spread was even wider: Democrats cast more than 700,000 votes for president, while Republicans bandage closer to 550,000.

In 2018, 17% of the land'due south Democratic votes for U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke were bandage in Harris County alone.

"The number of Democratic votes that come out of Harris County is very of import for who wins the state," said Austin attorney and public-interest advocate Fred Lewis, who helped organize voter drives in Harris County after President Barack Obama won the county in 2008. "Information technology's no longer of import for who wins Harris considering that's over."

Jared Woodfill, a local attorney and former Harris County GOP chairman who has sued both Abbott and the county over the election, said conservatives aren't trying to thwart Democrats but are trying to enforce ballot laws.

"To the extent that the police is what it is, you've got to follow information technology," he said. "If the Democrats want to flaunt or violate the law, it's just illegal. The reason that these laws are in identify is to protect the integrity of the ballot box. So it'due south interesting that the Democrats want to somehow unilaterally suspend the law and put provisions in identify that will allow voter fraud to thrive."

Requests for interviews with Harris County GOP officials, including Chairman Keith Nielsen and several precinct chairpersons, and the Republican Party of Texas were not answered. The offices of Abbott and Steven Hotze, a Houston conservative activist who has filed several lawsuits with Woodfill, did not respond to requests for interviews. A spokesperson at Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's role referred questions to his previous statements and court filings.

Masked voters await in line outside a polling location in Houston. Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune

Expanding voter access

When Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman resigned in May, the commissioners on a political party-line vote appointed Hollins, vice chairman of finance for the Texas Democratic Political party and a local personal injury lawyer, to serve on an interim ground until her successor is elected in November. Hollins is not running for ballot.

Since Hollins' June appointment, he and Houston elections officials have launched a robust effort to expand voter access.

Hollins created a 23-point initiative this summer to plough effectually a decadeslong history of chronic election problems in the canton of iv.eight million and avoid a drib in turnout due to the coronavirus, which disproportionately affects Blackness and Hispanic people.

But Republican activists, party officials and state leaders take voted against local initiatives, sought injunctions and filed multiple lawsuits to halt the unprecedented endeavour in Harris County.

Their resistance has nearly uniformly advanced under the banner of guarding against "voter fraud."

"The Land of Texas has a duty to voters to maintain the integrity of our elections," the land's top Republican, Gov. Greg Abbott, said after issuing a recent declaration aimed at Harris and Travis counties that forced them to shut downward multiple drop-off locations for absentee ballots. "As we work to preserve Texans' power to vote during the COVID-19 pandemic, nosotros must take actress care to strengthen ballot security protocols throughout the state."

Abbott'southward nod to "ballot security" is in line with efforts by Republicans nationally seeking to bandage doubt on the security of mail-in ballots even as they encourage their own voters to use them.

There are documented cases of voter fraud in Texas, including recent highly publicized arrests in Gregg Canton and Carrollton, but they are rare and have been small-scale-scale efforts to dispense local elections.

"Election fraud, specially an organized mail ballot fraud scheme orchestrated by political operatives, is an affront to democracy and results in voter disenfranchisement and abuse at the highest level," Paxton said in a statement most i case.

Fraudulent efforts on a scale large enough to touch on the outcome of a statewide or national election have not been discovered, experts betoken out.

Beth Stevens, a old voting-rights activist who is now a senior adviser for voting rights for Harris County, said it has tried to place itself on the "cutting edge of voter access" in the months leading up to the November election.

"That has absolutely resulted in backlash from land leadership that wants to undo or prevent access that Harris Canton is trying to create for all eligible voters and, in the process, confusing voters and suppressing votes," said Stevens, an attorney who took a temporary leave from her task as voting rights managing director for the Texas Civil Rights Projection in July to piece of work on elections in Harris County this cycle.

Hollins' decision to hire Stevens was celebrated by Democrats, who view her as an ally in their efforts to increase voting accessibility and turnout.

"Hollins has shown that he really understands that anybody who tin lawfully vote should exist allowed to vote, and that voting should be easy and accessible, and I remember that by appointing Beth, he showed a real delivery to that," said Nicole Pedersen, who spearheads the Harris County Autonomous Party'due south voter protection efforts.

No. 3 on Hollins' list for improving access was to "promote and maximize vote-past-mail inside the premises of the law."

Commissioners had already canonical $12 million — tripling the budget for the 2016 elections — in Apr to help with mail-in voting expansion every bit voters became increasingly concerned about communicable the virus at the polls and large Texas counties joined the call to expand mail-in voting.

In Texas, absentee ballots are available simply to people age 65 or older, those confined in jail just otherwise eligible, people who are out of the county for the election catamenia, and voters who cite a inability or illness.

Lovely Washington thanks aboard a MetroLift vehicle later casting her ballot in Houston. Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune

The all-Republican Texas Supreme Courtroom scuttled that vote-by-mail expansion try in June. The court said susceptibility to the coronavirus could not in itself establish a inability that would make a voter eligible for a postal service-in ballot.

Only the court besides said that voters could decide for themselves whether their personal health histories, forth with susceptibility to COVID-19, qualified under the disability provision.

In Baronial, Harris County commissioners, forth party lines, canonical another $17 million to expand access to voting, about of it funded by a federal coronavirus aid package.

The county moved its election headquarters to NRG Park, dwelling house to the rodeo and the Houston Texans football game squad, including a 100,000 square human foot infinite in the NRG Loonshit where administrative piece of work and some voting volition take place.

For the first time in Texas, drive-thru voting was implemented in x locations.

Officials also increased the hours of several early on voting sites and announced that six locations would be open 24 hours a day in the final days of early voting.

Election machines were added in districts that expected heavy turnout, and changes in technology promised no more than delayed results — an ongoing headache in Harris for decades — or false waiting times.

Officials authorized 12 locations for voters to hand-evangelize their mail service-in ballots. In previous elections, only one drop-off indicate had been used.

Then Hollins announced plans in September to send mail service-in election applications to the county's 2.4 million registered voters.

Chris Davis, the elections administrator for Williamson County, called Hollins' innovations "very impressive" and said he thinks other elections administrators will look to Harris Canton as an example if all goes well this autumn.

"Personally, I like what I'chiliad seeing," said Davis, who has served in leadership for the Texas Clan of Elections Administrators. "He's thinking outside the box, and maybe that's what this kind of work needed."

But past the fourth dimension the canton'south attempt began picking upward steam, the political power struggle had already moved to the courts.

Fight from Republicans

For about every step it has taken, Harris County has faced opposition from state and Harris Canton Republicans. The almost ground gained by the GOP has come up in fighting efforts to expand admission to mail-in voting.

With merely three weeks to get before Election Day and early voting in Texas already underway, mail-in balloting remains the hottest flashpoint for the national GOP endeavor to raise concern over the integrity of the elections — and in Harris, the decisions and challenges mutate on a daily ground.

Paxton and others have insisted in court filings, as accept GOP state lawmakers who have supported other measures limiting voters' options, that their efforts are non partisan but rather in the interest of election integrity.

Commonly the target of criticism from Democrats, Abbott has too been sued by members of his ain party over the steps he's taken to expand voting — an actress week of early on voting and allowing early on drop-off of absentee ballots — using his pandemic-era powers in the name of election integrity to tinker with ballot law in response to the tug-of-war in the courts.

In August, both the Harris Canton Republican Party and the Texas attorney general's office filed legal challenges to Hollins' plans to send mail-in ballot applications to every registered voter, arguing that information technology invited ballot harvesting and would encourage ineligible voters to put fake data on their applications in order to authorize. Local officials had planned to include eligibility information with the mailers.

In September, a cadre of statewide Republican politicians and party leaders sued to stop Abbott's order allowing early on voting to start a calendar week early on, on Oct. 13, to combat long lines and crowds during the pandemic. That lawsuit failed.

Days after, Hotze, members of the Harris County Republican Party, and a number of Republican officials and candidates asked the Texas Supreme Court to strike the early-vote expansion in Harris and limit the canton's mail-in driblet-off locations to one spot. That lawsuit was dismissed after Abbott finer made the modify with an executive announcement, citing his emergency powers during the coronavirus pandemic.

On Oct. ane, a few days after Harris County opened its 12 locations for hand-delivering mail-in ballots, Abbott issued his annunciation limiting counties to i location, causing some of the state'south strongest Democratic counties to shutter multiple locations and triggering legal challenges.

Harris County has already received near a quarter of a million absentee ballot requests. In addition to the influx, there also are concerns about delays from the U.S. Mail.

Court rulings over the past week affirmed Abbott's conclusion to expand early voting and blocked Hollins from a plan to send some 1.9 million unrequested absentee election applications to registered Harris County voters under the age of 65.

The Texas GOP unsuccessfully sued Harris County on Monday, fighting Hollins' work to expand admission to curbside and drive-thru voting so that locals can cast their ballots from the safety of their cars, the latest in a long list of challenges to the canton'south efforts this summertime.

Also this calendar week, subsequently much back-and-along in court, Abbott was allowed to limit mail service-in driblet-off points to i location per county in a federal appeals courtroom ruling — a battle that followed Harris County ballot officials' decision before in the summer to allow 12 drop-off points to brand voting more convenient for hundreds of thousands of voters casting postal service-in ballots.

Pinkie Powell shows off her "I Voted" sticker later on casting her election in Houston. Powell says she didn't mind the hr await in line because "it'due south time for my voice to exist heard." Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune

Woodfill has filed a dozen petitions and lawsuits related to government action on the pandemic and the elections since May.

He and his clients oppose all election-police changes — peculiarly those pushed past the Harris County Clerk'due south Office and ordered by Abbott — that autumn outside the scope of the Texas Legislature, which is majority Republican.

"He [Hollins] is really changing the whole organization upwardly to make it a lot more than conducive to voter fraud, and you have to inquire yourself why," Woodfill said.

Stevens said the county's efforts, even though some accept been thwarted, volition make a difference in turnout for this twelvemonth's ballot.

"Despite all of the attempts to walk back and suppress the efforts that Harris County has taken to make certain that all voters have access, this will be more access than voters accept ever had in Harris County, considering of the initiatives that the clerk'southward office has put forward and that take been supported by canton leadership," Stevens said. "So we're excited to meet that unfold."

Disclosure: Prairie View A&M University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in function past donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Fiscal supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a consummate list of them hither.

Correction: A previous version of this story said NRG Stadium would serve as Harris County's election headquarters. In fact, NRG Park, habitation to NRG Stadium, is the canton's headquarters.

Source: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/15/harris-county-texas-voting/

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