HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — A proposed bill is threatening Harris County to get its act together when it comes to elections, according to experts.
SB 1993 will allow the Secretary of State to overturn an election and call for a new one in Harris County if 2% of polling places run out of paper for more than an hour.
We all remember Harris County's last election, when some locations ran out of paper and precinct judges reported sending voters -- in some cases hundreds of voters -- elsewhere. To this day, it's unclear if they all voted.
Rice University Political Science Professor Mark Jones said SB 1993 is all about wielding a big stick.
"I think the hope of Republican lawmakers is not that the Secretary of State will ever have to use this authority but rather, that in response to that, Harris County will get its act together and hold elections that aren't deeply flawed as we've had in the past cycle," Jones said.
Jones said this bill is also about marketing, allowing Republican leadership to show it is working hard on election integrity.