Pillars in the Houston Chronicle
Writing in the Houston Chronicle, Bill King and Charles Blain discuss Pillars’ efforts to boost trust in elections in the state and beyond:
This year, we joined with other Harris County residents to stand for election integrity. Pillars of the Community is a bipartisan national effort led by election experts Ben Ginsberg and Bob Bauer to restore trust in elections. Through it, we gained access to the county election process to better understand the security and integrity of this election.
Historically in Texas, the elected county clerk administers the election in each county. But that changed in Harris County in 2020, after Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman stepped down for health reasons. The county’s elections were run first by an interim county clerk and then by two appointed election administrators. Two of these officials had no previous background in running elections. The third was an experienced election administrator recruited from another state, but his experience did not appear to translate to Texas elections. In addition to this administrative inexperience, throw in a pandemic during the 2020 election to boot.