People who register to vote using a post office box instead of a home address may not be trying to rig an election, but the action is illegal and the Harris County voter registrar should purge the addresses immediately, Texas Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said Tuesday.
Last month, the senator’s office identified more than 60 active voter registrations at two UPS Store locations in Harris County, and expects that about 127 sites may be involved. Bettencourt said the people registering to vote with a P.O. box are not homeless and they haven’t necessarily been recruited by someone to sway an election but they may be in the process of moving or attempting to vote in a district where they don’t live.
“There are thousands of them and they’re registering at a P.O. box because they can,” Bettencourt said. “We found that about half these people were in the process of moving out of the county, and the other half were in the wrong district because no one lives in a 2-by-3-inch P.O. box. They can get their mail there; they just can’t make it their registration address.”
The state law barring people from using a P.O. box on their voter registration, authored by Bettencourt, went into effect in 2022. The senator acknowledged that Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar Annette Ramirez has only been on the job for about a year but said the blame lies with her office.
Ramirez said in a statement that her office is reviewing the records associated with UPS Store addresses identified in Bettencourt’s complaint and will promptly take any necessary action.
“The Harris County Tax Office is committed to maintaining an accurate voter roll and putting voters first,” she said. “The Tax Office took diligent and timely action to address the concerns raised in Senator Bettencourt’s complaint. Once it was brought to our attention, our office followed the process established by the Secretary of State and the Texas Election Code.”
“We will continue to work with the Secretary of State and other stakeholders to ensure our voter rolls are accurate, our statutory duties are met, and that every eligible voter can cast their ballot with confidence,” she added.
Bettencourt filed his complaint in November. Ramirez’s office responded on December 18, questioning the validity of the complaint. The Secretary of State’s Office on December 23 backed Bettencourt and said not only was the complaint valid, but an audit produced more P.O. box addresses than the 60 originally identified.
The state ordered “corrective action,” suggesting that the county could face state administrative oversight if its investigation revealed patterns of problems in maintaining voter rolls. Bettencourt said he’s confident the voter rolls will be brought into compliance, although he wasn’t so sure until the Secretary of State got involved.
It’a not the first time in recent history that Harris County elections have been scrutinized.
A 2022 investigation by the Texas Rangers found no widespread fraud, but an audit by the Texas Secretary of State’s Office uncovered paper ballot shortages, long wait times and malfunctioning machines.
A state law passed the following year, also authored by Bettencourt, dismantled Harris County’s elections administrator’s office and shifted supervision of elections to the county clerk’s office and voter registration to the tax assessor-collector.
Critics said at the time that the legislation was an attempt by Republicans to exert more control over elections in a blue county in a traditionally red state. State inspectors were assigned to monitor the handling and counting of ballots in Harris County in 2024.
Earlier this year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott took a shot at Harris County when he neglected to immediately call a special election after the death of former U.S. Congressman Sylvester Turner in March.
“No county in Texas does a worse job of conducting elections than Harris County. They repeatedly fail to conduct elections consistent with state law,” Abbott said in April, when he announced that Turner’s unexpired term would be decided in November.
Coincidentally, the Congressional District 18 race still has not been decided. Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards, both Democrats, are headed to a January 31 runoff.
About four years ago, when lawmakers began looking into voter registration addresses, there were about 4,800 P.O. box addresses on the rolls, enough to “park a question mark” on a close race, Bettencourt said.
“The law is really clear; you just have to get people out of there,” he said. “These addresses should be locked out as commercial addresses and you don’t get to register there. If you’ve got holes in the voter rolls, then people are not going to trust the election results.”
Bettencourt said he didn’t think it would be terribly cumbersome to get rid of the invalid addresses. The senator, who has been in office since 2015, previously served as Harris County’s tax assessor-collector and voter registrar for about 10 years, ending his tenure in 2009.
“A voter roll with integrity works where everybody is registered wherever they live,” he said. He added that he doesn’t believe Democrats are busing people to a UPS store to open P.O. boxes and telling them who to vote for, but it’s “somewhat intolerable” that a state law has been ignored for four years.
He added that he didn’t think anyone would be prosecuted for voter fraud. Notices will likely be sent to those using P.O. boxes to let them know that their registration is canceled. If they live in Harris County, they can re-register using their home address, he said.
“People are registering there because they can, not because they’re allowed to by law,” he said. “The previous tax assessor should have cleaned this up four years ago and didn’t. If you’ve got a problem, fix it. Just get it fixed.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.