Members of the Pillars of the Community have asked the following questions about Harris County’s election system. Here is what the county says about voting and elections. In future meetings, the Pillars and election officials will continue to discuss and explore these topics in detail.
There are multiple safeguards in place to ensure the security of voting by mail. When your completed Vote by Mail ballot is received at the elections office, it goes through a rigorous validation system.
Texas employs multiple layers of security to protect votes:
Is it possible for someone to vote more than once?
The voter registration system in Texas has multiple checks and balances to detect and prevent duplicate voting. The system tracks and flags any attempts to vote more than once.
It is illegal for non-U.S. citizens to register to vote. The Texas Election Code and the Secretary of State provide all county election officials measures which are in place to prevent non-citizens from voting. When registering to vote, Texans must attest to being a U.S. citizen. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office regularly obtains data from the Department of Public Safety (DPS), Texas courts and other agencies to identify non-citizens and compare the data to the statewide voter registration database. County voter registrars are also required to review their voter registration records and send notices to any voter the registrar reasonably believes is not eligible for registration, including due to non-citizenship.
Texas’ election code prescribes specific steps that are taken each election to ensure the accuracy of the vote count. First, voting machines in Texas are never connected to the internet. Second, only the software certified by the Texas Secretary of State can be loaded onto voting equipment. Third, all voting machines in Texas are tested for logic and accuracy three times – twice before the election, and once immediately after the election.
Additionally, poll workers are required by law to maintain a detailed chain of custody log for each voting machine. All tabulation equipment in Harris County is kept in a secure, restricted area that is sealed with locks and unique serial numbers.
While no system is perfect, Texas has layers of safeguards in place to ensure accurate and fair elections.
By law, early votes cast before Election Day — during the early voting period by personal appearance or by mail — are counted on Election Day, and the results released to the public at 7:00 p.m. or shortly thereafter.
Texas law requires ballots to be counted no later than 24 hours after polls close on Election Day. The results from Early Voting are reported first. In 2020, ballots cast during the early voting period by personal appearance and by mail comprised 88% of all votes cast in the election. The early voting cumulative election results were made public shortly after polls closed at 7 pm on Election Night. So, the question, “Why does it take so long to count votes in Harris County?” insinuates an assertion that is not accurate.
Historically, the geographic size of a jurisdiction, the size of its electorate, the number of polling locations, the complexity of voting equipment used in the conduct of an election, the administrative close poll procedures that ensure the integrity of the results and the varied poll workers labor pace determine how fast election officials are able to meet the 24-hour deadline to report the complete unofficial election results.
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