Elections

Harris County Again Chosen For ‘Random’ Election Audit

Texas Secretary of State John B. Scott announced on twitter that Harris County would again undergo an audit following the 2022 election. “Four Texas counties have been chosen for the 2020-2022 Election Audit cycle — to begin immediately after the November 2022 election,” said the secretary of state’s office in the tweet. Eastland, Cameron, and Guadalupe Counties were also selected.

The audits were authorized by the state legislature via the Election Integrity Protection Act of 2021. The counties are supposed to be chose “at random,” with two counties smaller than 300,000 and two with populations over 300,000.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee expressed skepticism about the integrity of the process through a tweet: “Yea, ok. I’m sure the state’s selection of Harris County was ‘randomized’ as the Election Code requires, Just like it was a random coincidence when last year the state announced an audit of our 2020 election hours after Trump sent @GregAbbott_TX a public ltr calling for an audit,” Menefee tweeted just after the secretary of state’s announcement.

Patrick Svitek, political correspondent for the Texas Tribune, said on Twitter in an apparent tone of sarcasm, “Quite the luck for Harris County here. The new law says two of the four counties have to be population 300K+, which is Harris, the most populous, and then 17 others.”

The 2020 audit, initiated after Texas elected officials were cajoled for weeks by former President Donald Trump, has turned up no significant irregularities according to the Texas Tribune.

Nick Anderson

Writer, editor, photographer and editorial cartoonist Nick Anderson has joined the Reform Austin newsroom, where he will employ the artistic skill and political insights that earned a Pulitzer Prize to drive coverage of Texas government. As managing editor, Anderson is responsible for guiding Reform Austin’s efforts to give readers the unfiltered facts they need to hold Texas leaders accountable. Anderson’s original cartoons will be a regular feature on RA News. “Reform Austin readers understand the consequences of electing politicians who use ideological agendas to divide us, when they should be doing the hard work necessary to make our state government work for everyone,” Anderson said. “As a veteran journalist, I’m excited about Reform Austin’s potential to re-focus conversations on the issues that matter to common-sense Texans – like protecting our neighborhoods from increasingly common disasters, healthcare, just to name a few.” Anderson worked for the Houston Chronicle, the largest newspaper in Texas, from 2006 until 2017. In addition to the Pulitzer, Anderson earned the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award. He’s also a two-time winner of Columbia College’s Fischetti Award, and the National Press Foundation’s Berryman Award. Anderson’s cartoons have been published in Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and other papers. In 2005, Anderson won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning while working for the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky. The judges complimented his “unusual graphic style that produced extraordinarily thoughtful and powerful messages.”