Both Harris County Clerk candidates were asked about election trust. Neither was asked why that office runs elections at all.

Community Impact published a side-by-side questionnaire Friday with the two candidates for Harris County Clerk, incumbent Teneshia Hudspeth and challenger Mike Wolfe. Both were asked how they would strengthen public trust in the county’s election process. Neither was asked about the state law that put elections in that office three years ago.

Why it matters

The clerk’s office runs elections in the third largest county in the country. It has that job because of Senate Bill 1750, a 2023 law written to apply to Harris County alone, which the county sued to stop and then stopped fighting.

A voter deciding this race on November 3 is being asked to judge how the office is run without being told how it got the work.

By the numbers

September 1, 2023. Effective date of SB 1750, which abolished Harris County’s appointed elections administrator and moved election duties to the elected county clerk and tax assessor-collector, per Votebeat.
2.5 million. Registered voters in Harris County as the Texas Tribune reported the figure in 2023.
782. Polling locations the county set up for the election before that law took effect, per the Texas Tribune.
39 days. Gap between the law taking effect and that year’s voter registration deadline, per the Texas Tribune.
21 years. Hudspeth’s stated service in the clerk’s office, since 2005.
More than 22. Elections she says she has overseen. The questionnaire attaches no timeframe to the number.
October 5 to register, October 19 to 30 for early voting, November 3 for election day, per the Texas Secretary of State.

What the coverage buried

The questionnaire prints “more than 22 elections” with no period attached to it. Hudspeth was elected clerk in November 2020 and sworn in on November 17 of that year. From the creation of the county’s elections administrator office in 2020 until September 1, 2023, her office did not administer Harris County elections. The 22 covers 21 years of work in the office, most of it in other roles, not a record as the official running them.

Nothing in the piece mentions SB 1750, the office it abolished, or the county’s lawsuit against it. Both candidates were asked about public trust in the county’s election process. The largest structural change to that process in a decade appears in neither the questions nor the answers.

That change had objections from both directions and still does. Republicans in the Legislature argued an appointed administrator answered to nobody on a ballot. Harris County’s Democratic officials argued the state had singled out its largest county. Neither candidate was asked to take a side on an arrangement they are both campaigning to run.

The other side

Hudspeth did not ask for the 2023 handoff and got very little notice. The Texas Tribune reported the effective date landed 39 days before that year’s registration deadline and 52 days before early voting started for a November ballot that included the Houston mayoral race. Her office has run county elections since then without a repeat of the reporting failure that ended the elections administrator’s tenure in 2022.

A candidate questionnaire is also a format, not an investigation. Community Impact asked four clear questions, printed the answers as given, and did not dress them up. The complaint here is about what the format leaves out, not about anything it got wrong.

What to watch

October 5, the last day to register. October 19, early voting opens. November 3, election day.
Whether Wolfe publishes the performance metrics he says the office should publish, before early voting rather than after it.
Whether either candidate says what they would do if the Legislature revisits the arrangement in the 2027 session.

Bottom line

Two people want the job of running elections for 2.5 million registered voters. The office holds that job because the state took it from a county appointee in 2023 and the county dropped its challenge before the Texas Supreme Court heard it.

That is the first thing a voter should know about this race, and it is not in the only side-by-side either candidate has been given.

Sources

Editorial