Harris County Again Amends Election Law, Keeps Polls Open Two Hours

[#TexasPolitics365]

Harris county, whose unilateral election law changes in 2020 prompted the state legislature to pass laws creating uniform election law across the state, is again making changes to its local election laws. It is unclear whether they received State sanction to do this.

Yesterday, one of the final days of early voting, Harris County election officials kept the polls open until 10 p.m., two hours after they were scheduled to close. The change was announced on Twitter and other venues by local media. The Harris county election office announced that nearly 75,000 people had voted on the second to last day of early voting.

The Harris County election office is still under investigation for election irregularities in 2020. It's supervisor of elections resigned in 2021 from the scandal-plagued office. The county is the third largest in the entire nation, and is a heavily Democratic enclave.

(Full story HERE
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Civil Rights Groups Sue State For Documents Related To Voting Roll Purges

[#TexasPolitics365]

Five voting rights groups have filed a lawsuit in a U.S. district court asking for Texas’ Secretary of State to release documents about a state program they claim “threatens to remove naturalized citizens from the voter rolls.”

In August, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office said Secretary John Scott had started a search to identify non-citizens on voter rolls and soon “found thousands of registrants for potential removal under this program,” the groups said in a joint press release Tuesday.

(Full story HERE.)
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Democrat Beto O'Rourke To Hold Statehouse Rally For Voting Rights

[#TexasPolitics365]

Again, Beto O'Rourke is driving into small towns in red Texas to talk about democracy. 

The former El Paso congressman, near-miss U.S. Senate contender, and wider-miss presidential aspirant has been on the road for a couple of weeks on his "Texas Drive for Democracy" campaign tour, holding town halls about voting rights. 

The likely future Democratic candidate for governor is heading to Austin today for a big rally at the Texas Capitol. A counter-rally by Republicans will support GOP legislators' plan for election reforms, witch Beto and his fellow Democrats call "voter suppression," but Republicans say is necessary to prevent fraud and local counties from creating their own election laws. 

They cite Harris County in 2020, which arbitrarily extended voting hours and locations to ramp up vote totals in the heavily Democratic areas of Houston.

(Full story here.)
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