Harris County Workers May Get Extra Pay to Vote

The Harris County government is seeking help with future county elections to cut costs, streamline the training and onboarding process for election officials, and at a time when the election administration has received intense scrutiny in the Houston area and beyond. to make voting and ballot counting smoother and more efficient.

On Tuesday, the Harris County Court of Commissioners voted 4-1 to authorize the creation of a special corps of existing county officials to help run elections in Texas’ largest county. As proposed by County Administrator David Berry, these employees will provide support to the Harris County Election Administrator and receive additional compensation for their election-related duties.

The idea is to build on the District Election Officers Program, approved by commissioners last April, in which district officers volunteer to assist with elections and receive training as needed, as determined by the Electoral Commission. Electoral Commission spokeswoman Nadia Hakim said 150 such officers were deployed during the November 8 midterm elections.

“The way to improve the program is to have a permanent group of county employees who can work in the election, whether it be helping with cars or helping with processing, and find a group of people that we can rely on who are properly trained, About This Berry told county commissioners at a meeting on Tuesday. “We think it will be necessary to pay them and pay them appropriate compensation.”

Clifford Tatum, who is in charge of Berry and Harris County elections, has been tasked with working out the finer points of the plan and returning them to the Court of Commissioners, along with a cost analysis, for final approval. Berry said he hoped this could happen ahead of the next election in May.

In addition to the 150 county employees who worked in the most recent election in November, when Harris County had 782 polling stations on Election Day, Hakim said the Election Commission deployed all of its 140 employees and also brought in about 300 temporary workers hired through HR. agency. . The use of temporary workers comes at a significant cost, she said, and the election commission typically had to train new groups of temporary workers and volunteers from the district before each election cycle.

Building a team of district employees with election-related responsibilities formally added to their existing job responsibilities, who will be pre-election trained, will help reduce the need for temporary workers and training sessions, Hakim said. It will also provide a greater sense of consistency and continuity in the conduct of elections, for which Harris County has been heavily criticized in recent election cycles.

In 2021, Texas legislators passed a sweeping voting bill that eliminated some of the Harris County methods used in 2020, such as through voting and 24-hour voting. The Harris County Republican Party then sued Tatum and the Board of Elections after the November 2022 election for allegedly violating state election laws and disenfranchising voters due to ballot shortages, malfunctioning voting machines, and inconsistent opening hours at various polling stations. And more than 20 losing Republican candidates have filed to run, citing some of the same issues in Harris County, which has leaned Democratic since the 2018 election.

“I think it helps to make things more efficient if you have something more consistent,” Hakim said. “You will have people readily available and they are already working in the county, so they have passed background checks. It’s also good government.”

Tom Ramsey, the only Republican on the Court of Commissioners and the only panel member to vote against the proposal, said Berry, Tatum and their offices should also consult with the Harris County Clerk’s office and the Harris County Tax Collector’s office for suggestions on how best to hold district elections. These offices, led by elected officials, conducted county elections before the Electoral Administrator’s office was created in 2020.

Hakim said county employees who are called to vote must be registered as voters in Harris County. And while the specifics of their election-related duties have yet to be determined, she said they will not serve as polling station judges or perform similar functions.

Hakim added that a lot of physical labor is required to hold elections, such as transporting ballot boxes, equipment and machinery.

“Our district staff is very helpful on election night,” she said. “We had a countywide election with only people from our office and only our temporary workers that we hired, and we got really tense. really shows us that we are here for our residents.”