Harris County judge Fredericka Phillips has signed an order to extend polling times at nine locations throughout Harris County until 8 p.m.
Those polling locations failed to open at 7 a.m. this morning, prompting the Texas Civil Rights Project and the Texas Organizing Project to sue Harris County to extend polling times.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday afternoon, the two groups alleged that the county was violating the Texas Election Code because polling locations that opened after 7 a.m. would not remain open to voters for 12 hours on Election Day as required by state law.
Those nine locations are:
- Iglesia Trinidad (Precinct 0597), 11602 Bobcat Road
- Metcalf Elementary (Precinct 0882), 6100 Queenston
- Evelyn Thompson Elementary (Precinct 0061), 220 Casa Grande Drive
- Hampton Inn Katy Freeway (Precinct 0055), 5820 Katy Freeway
- FIesta Mart (Precinct 0541), 8130 Kirby Drive
- John Marshall Middle School (Precinct 0046), 1115 Noble Street
- HOAPV Community Building (Precinct 0030), 1810 Bluebonnet Place Circle
- Lone Star College Cypress Center (Precinct 305 and 951), 19710 Clay Road
- Houston Community College Alief Center (Precinct 0428), 13803 BIssonnet
Harris County won't release early voting results until 8 p.m., the Texas Secretary of State's office said.
Polling locations across the country “not only failed to open at 7 a.m., but remained closed until well after 7 a.m.,” the plaintiffs wrote. The two groups put forth affidavits from several Harris County voters who faced delays Tuesday morning and, in some cases, were kept from casting their votes before needing to head to work.
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Among them was Jessica Hill, a local teacher who had to get out of line at 7:45 a.m. because she needed to be at work by 8 a.m. Hill had arrived at Marshall Middle School by 6:30 a.m. and was the first person in line to vote. But poll workers were locked out of the building until 6:47 a.m.
When they started letting voters in to vote, the sign-in machines were not working. She watched poll workers troubleshoot the machines until leaving at 7:45 a.m.
Early morning voters across Harris County were met by a series of delays and equipment issues that resulted in long lines at the polls and in some cases kept voters from casting their ballots.
“Harris County has been a major flashpoint, if you will,” Beth Stevens, voting rights legal director for the Texas Civil Rights Project, said earlier in the day.
At least 18 polling locations in Harris County either did not open on time or were only partially open on time with some locations at first operating with one or two machines when they were supposed to have eight or even 16, Stevens said.
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The Harris County Attorney’s Office said it believed the polls were open, but some of the machines were experiencing technical difficulties.
“Our position was that everybody that was an eligible voter at those locations, according to the evidence that was presented to the court, had an opportunity to vote or would have an opportunity to vote by 7,” said Douglas Ray, special assistant with the Harris County Attorney’s Office.
Ray said he wasn’t aware of a judge ordering polling locations to extend their hours in Harris County before, but added it’s happened in other Texas counties.
Those sorts of issues are “typical of start-up issues on Election Day,” said Hector de Leon, director of communications and voter outreach for the Harris County Clerk's Office. He said the county has technicians stationed across the county so they can get to voting locations within 10 minutes of a technical distress call and get machines up and running.
“There’s nothing atypical about this morning,” de Leon said. “It’s just the nature of Election Day morning.”
His comments came before the lawsuit was filed. Harris County officials couldn't immediately be reached for comment on the suit.
Beyond violating the Texas Election Code, the delayed openings of polling locations and the county’s failure to provide functional equipment at those polling locations also amount to a violation of the 14th Amendment, the plaintiffs argue.
“The right to vote is a fundamental constitutional right, protected under the Equal Protection Clause from undue burden,” they wrote in the lawsuit.
But the county’s practice of late openings “effectively treats plaintiffs and voters in the precinct at issue differently from voters from other precincts within Harris County and around the state, who benefitted from polling locations offering 12 hours of open polls on Election Day,” they argued.