Texas takes over voter registration in Val Verde County amid struggles
Three years ago, Texas Republicans approved a state law that was designed to allow unprecedented state oversight of elections in Harris County, a Democratic stronghold that is also the state’s most populous county and includes most of Houston.
State Republican lawmakers said at the time they were responding to problems and irregularities with Harris County’s elections, while some election and policy experts decried the partisan overtones of the new law and said it amounted to an intrusion on local control of elections.
But the law also said the state could take control of elections in smaller counties, if it found problems there when conducting state-required random audits. Now, the state is using the law for the first time — but not to take over in Harris County.
Instead, the state has assumed administrative oversight of voter registration in Val Verde County, which sits along the Rio Grande west of San Antonio and has around 30,000 registered voters. The county voted Republican in the past two presidential elections.
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/06/12/texas-elections-takeover-val-verde-county/