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Taking over Harris Elections Could Boost
Greg Abbott Odds of Turning County Red
Texas House & Senate Races Rankings - Crystal Ball for 2026 Texas Elections
Capitol Inside
January 9, 2026
Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to turn the Democratic stronghold of Harris County red in 2026 despite the potential for disaster for the GOP in the second midterm election on President Donald Trump's watch. But Abbott may have found a way to overcome the seemingly insurmountable odds that he faces in the quest to make the state's largest county Republican. He wants the state to take over the 2026 elections there.
Abbott called on Thursday for the state of Texas to seize control of the elections in Harris County in response to a complaint from a Republican lawmaker about people who are registered to vote with commercial post office boxes as their official home address.
"Harris County is repeat violator of election integrity," Abbott declared in a post on X. "Harris County elections officials find more than 100 voter registrations illegally tied to P.O. boxes.
They should be stripped of operating elections and state officials should take over."
Abbott would expect to have a better shot to make the promise about Harris going red come true if he is running in the Houston area through the Secretary of State's office that he controls as the leader of the executive branch. Abbott proposed the unprecedented action in reaction to a story in Houston Public Media about State Senator Paul Bettencourt's push to force the county where he's based to comply with changes to state laws that Republicans in Austin enacted in the past few years.
Secretary of State Jane Nelson, a former state senator who Abbott appointed to serve as the top Texas election official - raised the prospects of oversight from the state in the conducting of elections in Harris County as a result of the concerns that Bettencourt brought up in a letter to Harris County Tax Assessor Annette Ramirez in November. Nelson said the failure to comply with the new registration requirements could prompt intervention from the state.
“If we find reason to believe the Harris County voter registrar is failing to protect voter rolls or is not operating in the good faith Texans deserve, we will not hesitate to take the next step toward state oversight,” Nelson said last fall.
But the state takeover that Abbott could direct if he makes good on the threat would be little more than a power grab by the governor if he and other GOP officials in Texas have nothing more to try to justify such an action than foot-dragging in the case of a problem that is minor compared to real voter fraud.
Based on election audits that Abbott and lawmakers have ordered in recent years, the number of voters who are registered at private post office boxes has fallen considerably in Harris County in the past five years when compared to the total that Bettencourt alleged.
According to the web site Democracy Docket, an audit of the 2020 election in Texas found 687 Harris County voters with commercial post office boxes listed for their home address. The state uncovered 329 voters with addresses as P.O. boxes in Dallas County, 320 in Tarrant County and 35 in Collin County.
While that clearly is an infraction now, 100 voters with post office boxes in a county with a popular of 5 million - including 2.6 million who are registered to vote - is a number that's insignificant as far as the outcomes of elections in Harris are concerned. Harris County essentially has one voter registered at a P.O. box for every 26,000 residents - down from a rate of one for every 3,785 five years ago.
Nelson even commended Harris County tax officials for actions they'd taken to fix the problem. "Our office acknowledges and appreciates your diligent and timely efforts to respond to the items listed in the complaint and to ensure the accuracy of your voter registration records through proper list maintenance activities," Nelson told Ramirez in a letter dated December 23.
No one besides the governor have suggested that the voter registration address problems resulted in any illegal voting or other kinds of ballot box fraud.
more to come ...
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