Fresh off last November’s midterm elections, Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum has implemented operational upgrades to the county’s system and vote collection process for presiding judges working at polling locations.

These changes have been in full swing as early voting for the May 6 election – which covers races for school board trustees, public infrastructure bond proposals and smaller county municipal leaders and mayors – started this Monday, April 24 and will end on Tuesday, May 2.

Tatum’s moved to alter the county’s procedures after some Republican candidates made claims of voter suppression that they said were due to paper ballot shortages at least 20 of the total 782 polling locations.

To avoid similar issues from reoccurring, the county has digitized its inventory system, moved from its old phone system to the software tracking system, ServiceNow, and designated several of its early voting polling locations as supply centers – locations where ballot paper or other election items that are needed can be picked up, according to Nadia Hakim, deputy director of communications for Harris County election administrator’s office.

Additionally, the county has designated six rally centers where presiding judges will go after they have completed their closing procedures; instead of having to drive all the way to a central downtown location as they did with NRG Arena in the last election.

Each judge will be assigned to one of the six locations; this is meant to make the unofficial results available to the public sooner, Hakim said.

Brandon Rottinghaus, University of Houston political science professor said that this election can be used as a trial run as it features local races on the ballot making it a smaller scale, lower stakes election.

“It is helpful for municipalities to start off with an election like this after they’ve made changes so it can give them a sense of where there might be some flaws and gives them an opportunity to fix them before they’ve got a groundswell of additional voters,” Rottinghaus said.

Elections like these that cover what may be considered by voters as “smaller stakes races” tended to have smaller turnouts in the past.

However, Bob Stein, political science professor at Rice University, said this has changed in the last couple of years due to the county and state’s political environment.

“Since 2020-2021, we’ve seen this dramatic increase in interest, largely due to partisan efforts to mobilize conservatives or liberals on both sides, but much more frequently and effectively on the conservative side,” Stein said.

Although this increase has occurred, Stein said voter turnout is still lower when compared to a larger-scale election.

Dr. Benjamin Bannon, Manager of Training for Harris County Elections Administration, who prepares the presiding judges’ working polling locations, has been in close contact with the county to ensure that the changes implemented are processed and understood by the judges.

“We are given updates and information and what we do is make sure the training that we are delivering is accurate and communicated to everyone,” Bannon said.

He conducts four-hour long classes making sure the judges carry out procedures correctly, and also trains them to handle and interact with voters at the polls.

“We model training as to how we would like to operate at a voting center with accuracy and precision,” Bannon said. “We tell the judges that they are going to be met with individuals who know what they are doing and those who may need a few questions answered.”

Although these judges will not be traveling to a central location this time around, no other changes to how they are supposed to operate were made. The county usually updates their training curriculum ahead of every midterm election.

For small-scale elections like this one, Bannon trains around 2,000 judges, compared to larger ones, where he will train around 6,000.

As of the end of day on Wednesday, April 26, a total of 4,936 voters submitted their ballots at the polls, while 664 voters who qualified turned in their ballots via the mail, according to the Harris County election administrator’s office.

On May 6, there will be 126 polling locations open to the public for their last chance to cast their ballots.

Stein does not foresee any issue occurring during this election and given the rhetoric around the last election, said the elections administrator’s office would not want a problem to arise.

“They want to have what is called a flawless campaign, the challenge is seeing if they have the staff and equipment now to do that,” Stein said.

Or as Rottinghaus put it: “No news is good news; a quiet election is something they are looking forward to and can do if they have what they need and the staff power to do so.”

Voters have until May 2 to participate in early voting at any of the 29 polling locations from 7 a.m. – 7 p.m. each day except for Sunday when locations will be open from noon – 7 p.m. on Sunday. The final opportunity to cast their ballots in this election will be on May 6.

Those voting can show up at any of the 126 voting locations on election day between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

A government issued form of identification will be asked for those voting and voters who are coming in-person to the polls are allowed to bring written notes or a printout sample ballot.