Abbott, in a news release, said he wants the secretary of state, attorney general and Texas Rangers to initiate probes into "allegations of improprieties in the way that the 2022 elections were conducted in Harris County."
"The allegations of election improprieties in our state's largest county may result from anything ranging from malfeasance to blatant criminal conduct," Abbott said in a statement, which did not offer further detail. "Voters in Harris County deserve to know what happened. Integrity in the election process is essential. To achieve that standard, a thorough investigation is warranted."
Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum responded in a statement, saying the county is "committed to transparency" and already is participating in the state's audit process of the November election.
"The office is currently completing vote tabulation of provisional ballots in reparation for the statutorily required manual count that must occur before canvassing," Tatum said. "The last day to canvas is November 22, 2022. The office is currently reviewing issues and claims made about Election Day and will include these findings in a post-elections report to be shared promptly with the Harris County Elections Commission and the County Commissioner Court."
The county elections office completed its preliminary count of more than 1.1 million ballots last Thursday afternoon.
The attorney general's office did not respond to a request for comment.
Election monitors from the Texas Secretary of State's office and the U.S. Department of Justice were present in Harris County for Election Day, providing both state and federal oversight.
Secretary of State's office spokesman Sam Taylor said the agency referred the matter to the attorney general's and Harris County district attorney's offices for investigation. Taylor added that the county already is subject to the next round of randomized post-election audits required by the Republican-backed elections overhaul law, Senate Bill 1.
With that underway, "we will be collecting even more information to ultimately provide the public with greater clarity on the root causes of the issues witnessed in Harris County on Election Day," he said.
A spokesman for District Attorney Kim Ogg would neither confirm nor deny whether an investigation was underway, citing office policy to not do so unless charges are filed.
The delayed openings of about a dozen polling places in Harris County last Tuesday led a state district judge to allow an extra hour of voting time at all poll sites after a last-minute lawsuit filed by progressive advocates.
The attorney general's office immediately appealed, and the Texas Supreme Court ordered the county to segregate votes cast during the extension while it reviews the judge's action.
GOP Lawsuit
Also Monday, the Harris County Republican Party filed a lawsuit against Tatum and the county, alleging paper shortages at some voting centers amounted to violations of the Texas Election Code.
Harris County has countywide voting and residents had 782 locations to cast their ballots on Election Day. The paper shortages affected a small number of polling places.
The GOP lawsuit, however, claims "countless" voters were turned away due to the paper shortages and did not go to a second location to vote.
The lawsuit alleges Tatum violated the election code in numerous ways, including releasing early voting results before polls closed at 8 p.m., the improper disposition of damaged ballots and inadequate instructions on how poll workers were to manage instances in which the two-page ballots were not completely or adequately scanned into machines.
The lawsuit would not overturn any of the elections on Tuesday's ballot. It asks the court for an injunction to make sure the alleged violations do not happen again.
"The only individuals who can seek a new election are those that were candidates on the ballot," said Andy Taylor, the party's legal counsel. "The candidates that would likely file an election contest are the ones who just came up short by a few votes.
Taylor said he believed there are races from Tuesday's election that would be "viable" to contest.
State Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Baytown Republican who chairs the Texas House Elections Committee, called on the Harris County district attorney to prosecute Tatum for violating state election law.
"Hopefully, people will go to jail, as they should," Cain said. "I don't have that much faith in the Harris County DA's office but Kim Ogg, if you're listening, you've got a job to do."
Tatum has denied the county ignored requests from any polling location to deliver additional paper.
The county attorney's office declined comment.
Dem Pushback
Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, a Democrat who was not on the ballot this year, said Abbott's call for an investigation is linked to nationwide efforts to undermine elections.
"Taking a page from Trump's 2020 election subversion playbook, Governor Abbott and election deniers across Texas have laid the groundwork to cast doubt on Harris County's midterm elections for over a year," Ellis said. "Before votes were ever cast or counted, they weaponized partisan election probes, conspiracy theories, and anti-democracy laws like SB 1 to put this play into motion. The people rejected those tactics last Tuesday, and I'm confident that democracy will still win the day."
Hani Mirz, the Texas Civil Rights Project's voting rights program director, issued a statement saying the governor's announcement is what civil rights organizations were worried about when they called for the U.S. Department of Justice to send federal monitors to Harris County.
"Launching a criminal investigation of election issues would be an especially clear and alarming escalation of the state's campaign against the voters of Harris County — the most diverse county in Texas," Mirz wrote. "The state has proven time and time again that it is a bad-faith actor when it comes to protecting voters. The governor should rescind his self-interested call for investigations, and allow election officials to do their jobs and finalize the election results."
Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey, a Republican, issued a statement saying he supports an investigation.
"Clearly, Harris County has a chronic problem with administering elections, and this warrants an investigation," Ramsey said. "Just as I called for an audit with the previous unelected elections administrator, I appreciate the governor's commitment to open and fair elections."
Harris County Democratic Party Chair Odus Evbagharu called the governor's request for an investigation "yet another example of the political theater we've come to expect from our state leader," in part because the county already has procedures in place to evaluate problems after an election.
"Gov. Abbott is acting like Harris County doesn't examine elections after they occur, and that is simply not the case," Evbagharu said. "The elections administrator always conducts a postmortem after an election and from that report, processes are updated and streamlined and corrections in process are made."
The county has commissioned a report on problems experienced during the March primary. A preliminary version was released over the summer.
Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia said any problems on Election Day were related to the switch to new voting machines that brought the county into compliance with a recent state law requiring counties to use machines that produce a paper record.
"The issues, that were not specifically in any particular areas, were technological challenges that were mandated by Texas state law," Garcia said. "Rather than waste resources on this nonsense, Gov. Abbott ought to investigate how many permitless guns have been used in violent crime."
Tarrant County, which uses the same Hart InterCivic voting machines as Harris County, experienced issues in 2020 when electronic scanners rejected around one-third of mail ballots, forcing the county to create copies of the ballots to scan, then had delays due to an equipment malfunction in this year's March primary and a software problem in the May primary runoff. Tarrant County also had delays opening polls in March, reporting that all polling locations were open by 11 a.m. Like Harris, Tarrant also is subject to the state's forensic audit of the 2020 election.
Tatum, who just took office in August, was selected by the Harris County Elections Commission to replace Isabel Longoria, the outgoing elections administrator.
Longoria resigned just days after the March primary, following criticism over a slow vote count and the failure to include about 10,000 ballots in its Election Night tally. Those ballots were included in the final count. Harris County Republicans called for Longoria's termination, even after she submitted her resignation.
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