On Wednesday night, the Harris County Elections Office filed an extension request for ballot counting and received same-night approval of this request.
The request follows residents casting over 1.1 million ballots on Election Day. Out of this total, the county received 1,099 mail-in ballots and 857 emergency slot ballots.
According to Leah Shah, the director of communications at Harris County Elections Office, these mail-in and emergency slot ballots were the ones that still needed to be processed and counted.
The standard time for this return in counting, as determined by Texas Election Code, is 24 hours after polls close. Shah mentioned as this deadline approached, the county knew it could not complete the count in time. In response, Harris County election officials met with a state district judge who permitted the extension of the counting period.
As stated by the Secretary of State’s office, Harris County is the only county in all of Texas to have requested this extension. However outside of the state, counties in Arizona and California are still completing the counting process despite it being days after Election Day.
Shah attributes the need for more time to count and process these mail-in and emergency slot ballots to the implemented state requirement of paper ballot records.
This is not the first time that Harris County has gone against the deadline in counting. In the March primaries, the county also went over the 24-hour mark in processing and counting ballots. The delay in counting stemmed from a new counting procedure that took more time than the one used in old voting machines from prior elections.
Shah states that the county is expected to finish counting all votes by the end of day on Thursday. As of Thursday afternoon, all mail ballots received before the polls closed were counted in total and this count was submitted to the Secretary of State’s office.
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2022.
