HOUSTON — There will be extra sets of eyes in Harris County on Election Day. The Department of Justice will be sending election observers.
That’s in addition to the Texas attorney general task force and the Secretary of State’s office, which is sending its own inspectors to monitor the vote.
The Texas Secretary of State’s Office is using a process that has been in place for 25 years, assigning election inspectors to polling locations where voters have requested more oversight.
Director of Communications Sam Taylor said the inspectors are typically silent.
The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has assigned 118 inspectors for the 2022 General Election. Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Travis, and Williamson counties will each have seven. There will be six in Tarrant, three in Collin and Denton and two in Fort Bend, El Paso and Hays counties.
“They do not talk to voters. They don’t talk to the election officials, except to let the election officials know that they’re there on behalf of the state when they come to check in at that polling place and observe,” Taylor said.
“Under the law, if our office receives a request from 15 or more registered voters to send an election inspector to a specific county, or to a specific polling location, by law, we have to send an election inspector,“ Taylor said.
Taylor said the inspectors carry a checklist, which includes 64 things to look for, such as accessibility, chain of custody, and making sure that election officials at polling places are following the rules.
But they won’t be the only ones monitoring elections in Harris County.
The Texas Attorney General's Office recently announced it has formed a “2022 General Election integrity team.” But Taylor said its role is different from the Texas Secretary of State election inspectors.
“They do their activities in the courtroom. We do our activities either in a polling place or at the central count location,” Taylor explained.
Texas Election Code 61 lays out who can be at a polling place. State inspector is one of 15 categories on that list but the attorney general's staff is not.
“For those who are raising the specter that the attorney general’s office is going to be side by side with our inspectors, watching voters, they just don’t understand the law,” Taylor said.
During the 2018 General Election, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office dispatched 253 inspectors across the state, 13 in Harris County. That’s more than double compared to this election.
We tried to learn more about the Texas Attorney General’s integrity team, but that office has not responded to our requests for comment.