After several Harris County polling places opened late, a state district judge ordered voting locations there to stay open until 8 p.m. But the state’s highest civil court blocked that ruling.
The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday set the stage for a legal fight over whether to count ballots Harris County voters cast during an extended hour of voting ordered by a lower court.
That lower court ordered that the state’s most populous county extend voting hours until 8 p.m. after several polling places were delayed in opening. The state’s highest civil court blocked that ruling and ordered Harris County to separate ballots cast by voters who were not in line by 7 p.m., the normal cutoff for voting in Texas. The Supreme Court’s order followed a request by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to reverse the lower court’s order. The Supreme Court posted the order on Twitter at 8:30 p.m.
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The order to keep polls open an extra hour at nearly 800 polling places came after the Texas Organizing Project sued Harris County, citing issues at numerous polling locations that opened more than one hour late Tuesday. Many Harris County voting locations also experienced voting machine malfunctions that caused delays and temporary closures throughout the day, the lawsuit claimed. The county did not fight the request for extra voting time.
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Harris County has regularly come under the scrutiny of Texas Republicans in the last few election cycles. The county was at the center of sweeping Republican legislation passed in 2021 to further restrict the state’s voting process and narrow local control of elections. That new law, known as Senate Bill 1, banned methods championed by Harris County in the first major election during the pandemic — 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting, both of which were disproportionately used by voters of color.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11/08/texas-harris-county-polls-close-8-pm/
