Harris County, Texas (KTRK) – Harris County has a new election official. As ABC13 first reported in July, Clifford Tatum will take over the election management role in the state’s largest county.
He will be sworn in next week, but it was the choice of the county’s bipartisan election commission to replace Isabel Longoria.
Tatum was selected on a 4-to-1 vote, but that did not come without opposition.
After supporting Tatum’s appointment, a committee member and county Republican chairwoman Cindy Siegel objected, citing previous elections overseen by Tatum that had been problematic.
“The ballots are wrong,” Siegel said of the 2012 election in Washington, DC. “The machines don’t work. People’s ballot papers aren’t programmed correctly. Huge lines.”
County President Lena Hidalgo described Siegel’s last-minute heart as a political stunt.
“We called Mr. Tatum first the bipartisan way,” Hidalgo said. “So this was really heartening to me, that in Harris County we were doing something different, that we were honest about the challenges that were and didn’t exist, and unfortunately, the vote wasn’t bipartisan.”
Tatum’s appointment comes after Isabel Longoria, the first and former county director, resigned after the primary election last spring, when the count was slow, and the count was initially inaccurate. That began nationwide research that reached out to Tatum, who has 16 years of experience handling elections at all levels.
The move is not without critics outside of President Siegel, notably Judge Hidalgo’s general election opponent, Alexandra del Moral Miller.
“The election was a fiasco by all accounts, both sides,” Del Moral Miller said of the 2022 primaries in Harris County.
She criticizes the county’s move toward a designated official and away from elected officials, calling it bureaucratic expansion.
“You can see the growth of management positions,” she told ABC13. “Too expensive. High standard. I don’t see how that’s a good payoff for these taxpayers.”
But the county’s focus now is on ensuring a smooth general election in which people can vote safely and securely, and that counting is fast and accurate.
“In the long and short term, we have an eminently qualified election director,” Hidalgo said. “It is highly recommended, it has passed all security checks.”
Tatum will hit the ground running. Once he is sworn in, he has exactly two months left for in-person voting to begin early.
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