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Harris County leaders will debate a measure to fire the elections administrator after primary night’s vote count debacle
Harris County Republican leaders are calling for the county to reverse changes to the way it administers elections, which the Democratic majority on commissioners court implemented in 2020. Those calls follow long delays releasing the vote counts on Primary Election Night and the news that the administrator failed to tally some 10,000 mail-in ballots.
County Commissioner Tom Ramsey is leading the effort, with a proposal to Harris County Commissioners Court that Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria be fired and to disband her office. "In my opinion, the repetitive dysfunction of the unelected and frankly unaccountable County Elections Administrator Longoria is simply unbelievable," Ramsey said. "Clearly, she is not qualified, or clearly, does not understand what it takes to run an election of this magnitude, or maybe of any magnitude." Ramsey called for responsibility for administering elections be handed back to the County Clerk, as well as for the responsibility for registering voters to revert to the County Tax Assessor-Collector.
This sounds like a much needed change. The election official has no experience with elections, appointed by the County Judge (head of the county) who is in her first job. She clearly isn't up to the task. They both need to be replaced.
This wasn't a heavily contested primary - around 300K votes. The last midterm was over 1.2 million. They had issue after issue, failed to report results on time, and managed to lose a box of 10K ballots in the process.