In the Documents: Far-Right Efforts to Undermine Election Trust in Harris County, Texas
Records obtained by American Oversight include emails from election denial activist Bill Ely to the Texas Secretary of State’s office espousing conspiracy theories about voter registration.
Since 2020, Harris County, Texas, has been the focus of many baseless claims about election fraud, spurring multiple conservative-led audits and challenges to the county’s election procedures — sowing the kind of mistrust that can be used to reject results or to call for partisan control over election administration.
Records obtained by American Oversight shed light on recent conservative efforts to take over elections in Harris County, the state’s most populous and home to the more liberal-leaning city of Houston.
In the fall of 2023, in the midst of a since-disproven conspiracy theory that county officials intentionally deprived Republican precincts of an adequate supply of ballots during the 2022 midterms, the Republican-led Texas legislature passed SB 1933 and SB 1750. Both election administration bills applied exclusively to Harris County.
SB 1750 abolished the county’s elections office and put elections into the hands of the county clerk, while SB 1933 allows the Texas secretary of state to replace the clerk if they have “good cause to believe” the county has a recurring election administration problem. Voting rights advocates have criticized the vague laws, arguing that they leave much up to interpretation and could be easily abused by putting electoral power in the hands of partisan state officials, which threatens to deprive Harris County citizens of the right to run their own elections.
The records obtained by American Oversight show that in November 2023, Bill Ely, a Harris County GOP official emailed a complaint challenging a voter registration in Harris County to the Texas Secretary of State’s office.
In January, Ely — who in 2021 had given an online presentation about the party’s plan to create an army” of conservative poll watchers to oversee the 2022 midterms — forwarded the complaint to state Rep. Tom Oliverson. Oliverson forwarded the email to his legislative director and asked her to “reach out to the SoS and ascertain the status on this,” adding that it was “very high priority.”
The legislative director emailed Texas Elections Director Christina Adkins to ask for information on the matter at least three times in January and February. Adkins responded that the office had handled Ely’s complaint but that “he wasn’t very satisfied with our response,” adding, “He hasn’t given us any new information that would change our response,” and writing that the secretary of state’s office “can’t initiate or take action on voter registration challenges.”
In March, Oliverson’s legislative director asked Adkins whether the Harris County Registrar’s refusal to remove the challenged voter registration could be considered “a reocurring pattern of a failure to conduct maintenance activities on the lists of registered voters?” Adkins responded and asked to speak that day; emails show the two coordinated a time for a phone call.
There have been more challenges to voter registrations in Harris County since Ely’s complaints, and conservative scrutiny over the county’s election processes has also ramped up. In August, Texas Republicans complained about and delayed the county’s voter outreach plans, which included mailing unsolicited registration packets to eligible but unregistered voters. In October, election denier and GOP megadonor Steven Hotze sued the Harris County Registrar to remove “tens of thousands” of voters from the county’s voter roll.
Read more about American Oversight’s related investigations in The 2024 Anti-Democracy Playbook.