The Secretary of State has initiated an investigation after Senator Paul Bettencourt filed a complaint claiming that Harris County allowed voters to register their home addresses to post office boxes in violation of bills he authored in 2023.
In a November letter to Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Annette Ramirez, Bettencourt asserted that Harris County failed to remove voters from the county’s rolls who had registered their addresses to local United Parcel Service stores, also known as P.O. boxes. The alleged oversight, he wrote, could put the county in violation of state laws that aim to boost election integrity.
The complaint mentions two UPS locations on Westheimer Road and Waugh Drive that found more than 120 registered voters registered to those P.O. boxes.
In a statement on Tuesday, Secretary Jane Nelson said that county election officials are obligated to maintain accurate voting registrations and remove ineligible voters.
“If we find reason to believe the Harris County Elections Office 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.
Another layer of oversight imposed on Harris County could restrict state funding from the registrar. This wouldn’t be the first time that Texas officials have called for stronger state supervision over the county’s election practices.
The state office did not return a request for comment.
Bettencourt and other Republican state lawmakers in 2023 introduced bills to bolster election integrity, some of which targeted Harris County — the state’s largest Democratic stronghold. One piece of legislation written into law that year aimed to eliminate Harris County’s Elections Administrator position and turn over voter registration control to the tax assessor-collector’s office.
State lawmakers also advanced a Senate bill that would grant state oversight under specific circumstances for county elections through a complaint process — allowing Texas to override those same elected officials. Under the legislation, complaints can be filed by an individual who participated in an election, including candidates, county or state chairs of a political party, election judges or heads of certain political committees.
That law came after a 2022 midterm election in Harris County marked by a ballot paper shortage issue, accusations of delayed polling location openings and malfunctioning software. A flurry of legal action filed by candidates, including a contender for the district clerk’s position, emerged from the issues, and an appeals court in June this year struck down the final Republican-backed lawsuit that sought to challenge the results of the election that year.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also initiated this year his own investigation into more than 100 cases of alleged noncitizens voting in recent Harris County elections. The investigation targets similar assertions in South Texas counties.
On Tuesday, Bettencourt told Houston Public Media that extra state oversight on Harris County’s election practices could impose certain penalties like more audits, up to the removal of the office holder. The issue hasn’t risen to that level yet, but his office is taking the issue seriously, he said.
“There’s obviously an utter lack of compliance, and that’s gone on for years,” Bettencourt said. “There is the ability for [the] Secretary of State to withhold money if people aren’t doing their job, that’s part of the law.”
Language inside a bill he passed in 2023 says a notice of administrative oversight would include a specific recurring pattern of problems with election administration or voter registration identified by the state secretary. He is the first senator to file a complaint about a violation of that state law, Senate Bill 1933.
In a letter addressed to Ramirez this week, Christina Adkins, director of the state agency’s elections division, said the county is allowed 30 days to provide a response with any supporting documentation relating to the complaint. Bettencourt called the response he received from the tax assessor-collector’s office about the complaint insufficient.
Frida Villalobos, a spokesperson for the county’s tax assessor-collector office, said that the office was made aware of the senator’s complaint. In a statement to Houston Public Media on Tuesday, Ramirez said that the office is reviewing the records associated with the two addresses at the center of the complaint and will promptly take any necessary action.
“The Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar’s office is committed to ensuring the accuracy and integrity of the Harris County voter roll and to complying with all applicable laws.”
Bettencourt on Tuesday said that the county will need to comply with the recent Senate bills all over the county, and not only address the two locations at the center of the complaint.
“The problem by not complying is that we’ve had too many elections that have been decided in primaries or general elections by too few numbers to let this go,” he said. “What we know from statistics working this problem is that about half of these PO box registers are really people that are headed out of the county. Their next stop already is out of county.”
Copyright 2025 Houston Public Media News 88.7