A Texas judge has dealt a momentary blow to a law which Republicans intended to use to crack down on the potential for voter fraud in the state’s most populous county.
State District Judge Karin Crump in Austin on Monday temporarily blocked a law abolishing the position overseeing elections in Harris County, a Democratic stronghold. This came after county officials filed a lawsuit earlier this month.
But almost immediately, the Texas Attorney General’s Office filed an appeal to the state supreme court. As Fox News reported, the AG’s office said in a statement that the purpose of the new law is to “to ensure that elections in the state’s largest counties are properly managed by individuals who are accountable to the voters, not by unaccountable bureaucrats.”
Cindy Siegel, head of the Harris County Republican Party, told the outlet, “We aren’t surprised by [Monday’s] injunction. Nonetheless, we are confident this case will go to the Texas Supreme Court and they will rule that [the new law] is constitutional.”
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, a Democrat, fired back. “At the end of the day, we know that this is not about making elections better…. It’s about undermining confidence in our elections,” Menefee said.
The law in question was Republicans’ answer to issues during the November elections in Harris County, which included delayed poll openings and shortages of paper ballots. This resulted in nearly two dozen Republican candidates filing lawsuits on the grounds that these problems, along with illegally cast ballots, were to blame for their losses.
In light of this situation, the new law, which is set to go into effect on September 1, would return election oversight back to the tax assessor and county clerk.
But Judge Crump argued that the law unfairly — and illegally — singles out Harris County.
Fox News reports:
But in her orders in the lawsuit, Crump said the new law only applies to Texas counties with a population of 3.5 million residents. Harris County, with 4.7 million residents, is the only Texas county with that large of a population. According to the law’s language, no other county would be subject to the law even if their population were to ever surpass 3.5 million residents, Crump wrote.
The Texas Constitution prevents the Legislature from passing any laws that are not uniform throughout the state and only target a specific location, Crump wrote.
The new law is “unreasonable, arbitrary, and simply a means of singling out one county,” Crump wrote.
“Without this order, the state … will likely disrupt the upcoming election and cause havoc,” Crump further asserted.
Democrats used similar arguments in condemning the legislation.
“When the Texas GOP can’t win a race, they get very Trumpy: Either change rules, change the referee or cry in their spilt milk,” said Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia, a Democrat.
This latest battle in Texas is one of many playing out in states across the country over voting procedures in the buildup to the 2024 election. In some areas, shots are being fired within the same party.
In Mohave County, Arizona, for example, Republican officials recently shot down proposals to enact the hand-counting of ballots, which the measure’s proponents say would add another layer of protection against voter fraud. But the county Board of Supervisors — composed entirely of Republicans — said hand-counting would cost too much money.
Mohave, which has a population of approximately 220,000, is one of a handful of counties nationwide that have considered hand-counting, which has been pushed by voters (largely pro-Trump Republicans) who believe modern voting machines are vulnerable to tampering, a concern spurred by the belief that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in 2020 thanks to widespread voter fraud.
Arizona is a state that pro-Trump Republicans have continued to contest, asserting that Biden carried the once-solidly Republican state with the help of electoral fraud. The election-integrity movement in the Grand Canyon State has gained such traction that, earlier this year, the GOP-dominated state legislature passed a bill authorizing hand-counts, although it was vetoed by Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs.
As The New American previously reported, the mainstream media is already laying the groundwork for alleged upcoming “misinformation” regarding the reliability of voting machines. A Politico article from last month sounded the alarm bell about upcoming changes to federal voting-machine certification guidelines.
Per the article’s author, Zach Montellaro, the cause for worry is not the update itself, but the way in which these changes can be used by the Right, particularly supporters of President Donald Trump, as “misinformation” in order to sow doubt about the credibility of the 2024 election.
These diverse political battles of procedure are arguably as significant as the actual election.
Joseph Stalin once said, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
Ultimately, protecting the integrity of elections is not only important, but vital to the foundations of the American republic.
