Harris County elections continue to have problems. Would cutting the number of polling places help?

Widespread problems with Harris County elections likely would be relieved if officials reduced the number of polling locations in favor of fewer sites that operate more efficiently, a Rice University researcher and some recent reports say. “We do just fine with early voting,” said Robert Stein, a political scientist and fellow at the school’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. “We have all kinds of locations over 12 days and that count goes fine. Then, at the end of election night you have 900 people standing in line.” That line, like plenty of others, is made up of frustrated voters who, despite Harris County offering 782 polling locations with roughly 11,000 voting machines, encounter confusion and delays as poll workers troubleshoot problems, wait for instructions or replacement equipment from election officials.

County Election Administrator Clifford Tatum, the county’s sixth person to oversee elections since 2018, said Wednesday that officials would assess and investigate problems with this week's mid-term election once they have completed the final tally and verified election results. “We will look at every polling location,” Tatum said. Plenty of locations had problems Tuesday, ranging from poll workers leaving after the opening was delayed by a missing key to locations running low or out of the paper needed to scan ballots. Based on problems reported to Harris County Elections and Democrat and Republican party officials, the struggles many locations faced Tuesday were common, but many said uncommonly long delays to address the issues led to greater problems. Election workers, for example, told a Harris County GOP help line that they were running low on paper, only to wait hours for new stacks to arrive. Some workers at polling stations reported calling the county's elections help line, being put on hold for 45 minutes only to have the person on the other end hang up. The problems had 180 election administration technicians, along with officials at the central counting center at NRG Park and voting machine manufacturer consultants hopping from issue to issue, often requiring miles of driving from polling place to polling place.