Record turnout fueled by record spending
With no help from state, Harris County devoted $30Mto head off voting hurdles due to virus
WASHINGTON — After more than 128,000 Harris County voters cast ballots on the first day of early voting — outpacing the entire state of Georgia and nearly doubling the county’s previous day-one record — Judge Lina Hidalgo posed a question to her Twitter followers: “How does a county of 5Mpeople record more votes today than a state of 10M?”
The county dumped more than $30 million on this election, Hidalgo said, an “investment in voter safety and convenience.”
To ease voting during the coronavirus outbreak, counties across the state are spending an unprecedented amount. They’ve added early voting locations — Harris County has three times as many as it did in 2016 — hired more poll workers and created drive-thru voting options, while stocking up on plexiglass dividers, masks, hand sanitizer and more.
And it’s all coming out of either local budgets or federal funding. In typical fashion, the state of Texas isn’t paying for any of it.
Texas isn’t alone in short
changing elections. Experts say elections are underfunded across the country, with counties devoting an average of just half a percent of their operating budgets to them, according to one study. The result of that lack of funding bubbles up in Texas every election season: Massive lines and long waits to cast ballots at limited polling locations, or on old machines infamous for glitches.
“We’re getting the democracy that we pay for,” said Kathleen Hale, a professor at Auburn University who co-authored the study. “Andwe need to do better.”
In Texas, the 2020 spending has been fueled by a $23 million influx of federal stimulus funding meant to expand safe voting options during the coronavirus pan
demic. Republican lawmakers are already bracing for elections funding fights when the Legislature reconvenes next year.
“Clearly it’s going to be discussed, there’s no question of that,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican. “Once youdumpthat kindof federal money into a system, the next time it will be, ‘Oh my God, it’s a shock, we’re cutting elections budgets.’”
Bettencourt said the coronavirus and the federal windfall are “wildly distorting the cost of elections” and that Harris County and others like it should not expect “sugar plum fairies in the 2022 election cycle” as the state is already staring down a budget full of holes from the pandemic.
But voting experts say local elections offices need more money.
“We ask these offices to perform under exceptionally challenging conditions where policies change regularly and frequently,” Hale said. “Asking them to perform miracles with no money … it’s mean. And it shifts the responsibility and it shifts the focus away from other parts of county and state government.”
Counties now receive election funding from the federal Help America Vote Act grants, created after the 2000 presidential elections. Some counties, including Harris and Bexar, have also received millions in grants from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a national group offering funds for “safe and secure elections.”
Texas state government is on pace to spend about $18 million on elections in 2020— all going toward this spring’s primaries and the
summerprimary runoff races. Harris County alone is set to spend nearly twice as much in November’s elections, pouring in more than $33 million.
Fraud warnings, and funding
InTexas, countyofficials have also had to spend more this year as they’ve had to reformat ballots and readjust election plans repeatedly. Legal battles over mail-in ballots, third-party candidates and more have wound their way through the courts with ping-ponging rulings from judges. The final ruling in a suit over mail ballot dropoff sites cameat11p.m. the night before early voting started.
In one instance, Harris County officials printed nearly 2 million mail-in ballot applications they planned to send to every voter in
the county. Those had to be destroyed after the Texas Supreme Court ruled the county couldn’t send them out.
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said the lack of state funding fits with what he sees as the approach of Republican state lawmakers: “Put in spending caps and put all the burden on the local government.”
“The only thing they’ve done to hold down costs is voter suppression,” Wolff said, noting that Texas is one of five states that isn’t accepting COVID-19 as a reason to vote by mail, one of nine states thatdoesn’t allow voters to register online and one of 10 that requires them to register 30 days before an election, among other things.
Wolff said Bexar County several years ago spent more than $12 mil
lion in new voting machines and “got zero help on it.” This year the county is spending at least $2 million more than usual on elections because of the coronavirus outbreak. Wolff said he would be among those calling for more help fromthe state if the Legislature has that discussion next year.
State lawmakers who have adopted some of the nation’s toughest voting restrictions also have an obligation to financially support elections, said Myrna Pérez, director of the Voting Rights and Elections Programat NewYork University’s Brennan Center for Justice.
“With all of the anti-mail voting rhetoric that is coming around, you’re not seeing support for inperson polling places,” Pérez said. “What youare seeing isdiscouragement and detraction from a voteby-mail system — and continued starving of elections administrators who therefore aren’t able to shore up the in-person system.”
Texas Republicans have rejected assertions that they’re trying to suppress the vote, pointingout that Gov. Greg Abbott expanded early voting an disallowing absentee and mail-ballot dropoff in the weeks leading up to the election, not just on election day. Abbott on Tuesday called critics “clueless” and dismissed their complaints as “prejudicial political opinions.”
State leaders have warned of rampant voter fraud, though those claims have largely been unsubstantiated. But they’ve pointed to high-profile instances and recent arrests.
In September, the officials in East Texas filed felony charges against a county commissioner and three alleged accomplices in what they deemed an “organized vote harvesting scheme” during the 2018 Democratic primary. Last week, a North Texas mayoral candidate was arrested and charged withmore than100felonies related to voter fraud, accused of forging mail-in ballot applications formore than 80 residents in this year’s mayoral election.
It’s unclear whether this year’s elections will spur calls for additional funding from the state. Bettencourt sayshe expects theywill— and that the state is going to have to look at election funding moving forward.
He pointed to a Texas Supreme Court ruling that allowed third-party candidates to stay on ballots, despite not paying filing fees and also said he is “very concerned about this backwash off of this giant federal spending spree in this area.”