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Texas Republicans are clashing again with the state’s most populous county over voting. This time, they’re criticizing Harris County’s plan for outreach to eligible but unregistered voters ahead of the registration deadline.
County commissioners were set to consider the proposed outreach effort at a meeting Tuesday. But they took it off the agenda without explanation after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Harris County Republican, put out a statement describing the proposal as an “attempt to bypass” a law passed last year restructuring the county’s elections. Bettencourt claimed without evidence that the plan would “have a very high probability of registering non-citizens to vote.”
In an interview, Bettencourt said he objects to the county commissioners proposing the outreach after the Legislature passed a law last year eliminating the county’s election administrator position and assigning all election duties to the county clerk and tax assessor-collector.