HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — There are still many unanswered questions about what went wrong during the November 2022 election in Harris County, and KHOU 11 is continuing to seek answers by joining a lawsuit to push for the release of information.
State investigations leading up to the election and election-day issues with paper ballot shortages and turned-away voters promoted KHOU 11 Investigates to file eight public records requests with Harris County in October and November of last year. The county appealed to the Texas Attorney General, which ruled that the information should be released. Instead, Harris County filed a lawsuit against the AG to continue to withhold records.
KHOU 11 intervened in that lawsuit last week, asking for the release of records related to its eight requests.
Seven of KHOU 11 Investigates' requests were listed in the lawsuit as of April 12. Those requests include information about the complaints made to the Elections Security Hotline, call logs for the election judge and technician support lines, a list of election workers and assignments, activity logs for election technicians, information about paper ballot allocation, text messages and emails by the Harris County elections administrator and records of write-in votes.
Aside from the requests cited in the lawsuit, Harris County has also refused to release the remaining request for payroll records for county employees who worked the election.
The county argued that the records should not be released because of ongoing litigation and the Secretary of State’s ongoing Harris County election audit, which it claims makes many records "audit working papers" exempt from the Texas Public Information Act, according to court records.
The Attorney General denied these claims in court filings and asked the judge to declare the information is subject to disclosure.
Along with KHOU’s requests, 32 other election-related requests from unnamed people and organizations are challenged by Harris County in the lawsuit.