Harris County put up 13 billboards telling you to check your registration. Neither story says what they cost.

Harris County has 13 billboards up telling residents to check their voter registration, and the county’s Harris Votes app launches October 1. Neither came with a published price, and the office running the campaign is not the office that keeps the rolls.

Why it matters

The registration deadline is October 5. Commissioners Court adopted a 67.147 cent tax rate eight days ago. A resident paying that rate can see the billboards from the freeway and cannot see what they cost.

By the numbers

13 billboards in English and Spanish, placed with Clear Channel Outdoor, which the clerk’s office estimates at nearly 6 million impressions a week.
The Harris Votes app launches October 1. The registration deadline is October 5. That leaves four days for its check-your-registration feature to matter for this election.
2.7 million registered voters in Harris County, which Voter Registrar Annette Ramirez put at about 90 percent of eligible residents, leaving roughly 200,000 still eligible to register.
100 plus contests on the Harris County ballot, which County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth calls one of the longest in the nation.
Early voting runs October 19 through October 30. Election day is November 3.
Published cost of the billboard buy or the app: none.

What the coverage buried

KPRC 2’s story names the vendor, the count, the languages and the weekly impressions. It does not give a dollar figure or name the budget line. Community Impact’s app story names no official, no cost and no approving body. Cost, and who pays it, is the question a taxpayer asks first, and it is the one thing absent from both. Neither outlet got a fact wrong. Both stopped one question short.

Second, both stories leave out which office does what. Hudspeth’s quoted line is the registration deadline, but registration in Harris County is kept by the Tax Assessor-Collector, Annette Ramirez, and elections are run by the clerk. Two offices, two outreach efforts, and no story explaining the seam between them.

The other side

A county with a 100-contest ballot and roughly 200,000 unregistered eligible residents has a real reason to advertise, and voter education is cheap next to a confused election day. Clear Channel inventory at that reach is a defensible buy at market rates. The app is free, available in four languages, and its vote center, sample ballot and results features matter through November 3, not just through October 5. Community Impact reports it was downloadable before the official launch date, so the four-day window understates its use.

Fair on all counts. None of it requires keeping the price off the page. The county publishes contracts. Publishing this one would end the question in one sentence, and the fact that it has not been published is the only reason the question exists.

What to watch

October 5. The registration deadline, and the last day the billboards’ central instruction can change anything.
Whether the clerk’s office or Commissioners Court posts the Clear Channel buy and the app’s development cost.
October 19. Early voting opens, and the first real test of whether a longer ballot slows the vote centers.
Whether the registrations delayed by the Texas Department of Public Safety transfer failure clear the registrar’s office before October 5.

Bottom line

The advice on the billboards is good advice. Check your registration, and do it before October 5. The county just has no published answer to the obvious follow-up, which is what it paid to say so, and that silence is a choice the clerk’s office made rather than a fact nobody could find.

Sources

Editorial