Image Credit: John Nordell / Getty 
Citizens in Harris County, Texas are reporting voting machine outages and paper shortages across the Houston area county.
To many Republicans following the news, this may not come as a surprise as the state’s largest county recently hired a Democrat election official with a poor reputation.
Former Washington D.C. and Georgia election official Clifford Tatum was elected as the Harris County elections administrator on Aug. 16, 2022, after a failed attempt at overseeing votes in the nation’s capital.
Republican Party chair Cindy Siegel was the only person to vote against Tatum, complaining a 2012 election Tatum oversaw had “Wrong ballots. Machines not working. People’s ballots not programmed correctly. Huge lines.”
In 2012, The Washington Examiner reported the D.C. election cycle Tatum was in charge of was “plagued by long lines, ballot errors and malfunctioning equipment,” with a woman serving as an advisory neighborhood commissioner saying at the time, “It was a disaster and completely unreal. One of my constituents compared it to voting in a Third World country.”
“Constituents continually came to me saying they were handed the wrong ballot,” the woman said. “It was the worst day ever for the Board of Elections.”
Even current D.C. Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser was frustrated with Tatum’s poorly run 2012 election, calling his excuses for the failure “disrespectful.”
Harris County’s Election Administrator Clifford Tatum certainly lived up to his reputation of running elections like a “third world country”
Personally I believe he was intentionally brought on for that reason.
Price tag for taxpayers: salary $250k a year pic.twitter.com/5NFhQtcGnR
— Merissa Hansen
(@MerissaHansen17) November 8, 2022
After that debacle, exactly ten years ago, Tatum told lawmakers, “It’s our intent for that particular breakdown not to happen again.”
As Blaze TV reporter Allie Beth Stuckey pointed out on Twitter, Tatum also owes over 100 thousand dollars in income tax, which Texas state Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) brought attention to after Tatum was selected as Harris County election administrator.
Despite valid concerns, the Houston Chronicle dismissed Republican objections to Tatum being elected as the top Harris County election official with headlines such as “GOP Is Already Attacking Harris County’s New Elections Administrator, Citing Tax Lien.”
Now, during a crucial 2022 midterm election, the largest county in Texas is going through election-day issues with Tatum at the helm.
Local Houston news outlet KHOU 11 reports, “Voters across Harris County reported polling issues early Tuesday morning and they continued into the evening.”
At the stadium where the NFL’s Houston Texans play, nearly half of the voting machines available to voters went down and similar errors were reported across the county.
“Meanwhile, the election judge at BakerRipley on Navigation Boulevard said they were slow to open because they didn’t have the proper election supplies dropped off, including the key to open voting machines,” KHOU 11 reports, also saying a handful of voters were waiting as early as 7 a.m. where they had seen more than 200 people come and go without voting.
What happened this morning? We asked Harris County Election Administrator Clifford Tatum #khou11 @KHOU Here’s what he said about issues at #BakerRipley on Navigation am
a key y’all
pic.twitter.com/SFFEzi2Lvg
— Tiffany Craig KHOU
(@TiffanyKHOU) November 8, 2022
Voters at one location were turned away entirely and told to vote somewhere else because “the machines hadn’t been delivered.”
After 20 of the 60 voting machines were down at the voting center she showed up to, a Houston woman confronted Tatum on camera, criticizing him for voters being turned away.
“For that to not be ready when you had Friday, Saturday and Sunday to make sure we were good, I mean that has never happened at this poll,” she said.
After the mass “malfunctions,” Tatum was able to get Harris County to extend voting times by an hour.
In what could be an opportunity for foul play, voters who get in line after 7 p.m. are only able to cast provisional ballots, which are added to the vote count after election night so they can be manually processed.