A dialogue with Rice, UH professors who examined voting access across Houston’s nine-county region
Before the Texas party primary elections in March 2024 and the general elections in November 2024, Rice University Political Science Professor Melissa Marschall and University of Houston Social Work Professor Suzanne Pritzker were already researching the voting landscape across the nine-county region that includes Harris County.
The report they produced, commissioned by Houston Endowment, explores systematic barriers to and opportunities for civic engagement — specifically how the voting process and electoral participation is affected by federal, state, and county laws or practices.
Harris, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Waller, Austin, Brazoria, Galveston, Chambers and Liberty counties are home to about 7 million people. Battlegrounds for Access: Civic Engagement in the Greater Houston Region outlines numerous examples of how practices, policies, and information access vary from county to county and offers potential solutions that would make it easier for voters and would-be voters to participate in elections.
Their perspectives were informed not only by an extensive document review and data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission website, but also on-the-ground experience: Marschall and Pritzker joined the local election process as nonpartisan volunteers. Marschall served as a Harris County volunteer deputy voter registrar, and Pritzker volunteered outside polling places to answer prospective voters’ questions about voting procedures.
We spoke with both professors about the report’s findings, the 2024 election process, and how residents might engage with government entities to improve it. Their interviews have been combined and edited for clarity and space.
Houston Endowment (HEI): At the grassroots level, what voter empowerment aspects might citizen-advocates seek to address first? You’ve highlighted how some practices and policies vary among the nine counties — should they follow the same rules?
Suzanne Pritzker (SP): Where you live dictates essentially what information you can get about where and how to submit a voter registration form, where your polling locations are, what languages you have access to in different forms, or information on whether you know how to cast a ballot as a disabled voter. For me, I think a big thing that really stood out is just how different it was county to county to find out, ‘How do I participate in this process?’
One approach to uniformity is requirements on a state level. We’ve seen, for example, in the last legislative session, counties were required to post on their websites that they give order-of-voting priority to people with disabilities. But looking just before the election, some [counties] did and some didn’t.
Are there ways for counties to share good practices among each other as well? There’s that potential policy approach of mandating, but can there also be a more collective sharing of information among counties in which people are often crossing the borders between counties?
Melissa Marschall (MM): Plus, [administering elections] is not the only job that the county clerk does, and it’s probably a full-time job just to get information out about elections. So can we seal up gaps across the counties in what information is available and how easy that actually is for people to access?
There are state laws setting a minimum number of early voting hours and all that. But if [local election officials] want to do more, go ahead and do more. If you want to change it up a little bit, that should be allowed, as long as the purpose is to be responsive to the needs and the resources of the people in the county.
County election administrators are all trying to do the same job, and there’s also a lot of variation in the outcomes. It might be really interesting to see how much counties vary in terms of what they do.
HEI: Among the 50 states, Texas steadily ranks at or near the bottom for the percentage of registered voters who vote in presidential elections. Texas is also among eight states that do not allow citizens to register to vote online. What changes, if any, should be considered to address these standings?
SP: Allowing voter registration in Texas on election days and registration online would be very helpful.
In our nine-county region, we should work to help counties expand language accessibility. (Only Harris County is required by federal law to provide election information in English, Spanish, Mandarin and Vietnamese.) There is now an (auto) translating option on most of the county websites, but that’s different from having forms available, like a voter registration form or an absentee ballot request. We have an extremely diverse region. This is a place where counties can make decisions to do more than what the federal law requires.
MM: Online registration, that’s a big one. But that would have to be [decided] at the state level. But progress has been made with countywide voting — that’s been huge. I think that makes a really big difference, being able to go to any polling place within your county of residence, as has been the practice in Harris County for years.
We have our own polling location at Rice University. When the line is too long, students can walk across the street to the synagogue or take a 10-minute walk into the Medical Center. They don’t need a car to go somewhere else to vote, and they don’t need to stand in line for hours on campus if they don’t have time. The system of allowing voters to vote at any voting stations in their county is something that any county can adopt under state law.
HEI: What are some of the reasons why Texas has a lower voter turnout rate than almost all other states?
SP: We can’t look at our turnout without looking at the policies that are in place … there are more barriers here to register to vote than anywhere else, so you’re already starting from a pool of voters that is smaller.
MM: Texas has a younger, poorer, and less educated population that also includes a higher share of immigrants than a lot of other states. These factors are some of the biggest predictors of whether people are going to participate in the political process. Other states have wealthier and more educated populations in comparison to Texas, as well as people who have parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who have been voting in this country for a long time.
Texas has less of a social safety net than other states. We don’t spend as much money on social programs. So we have a lot of people who don’t have health insurance … We have a lot of people who just are working really hard every day to take care of the basics. So voting and being involved in politics are not as high on the list.
HEI: What are some of the best ways for individuals and groups to achieve a higher level of community engagement on election issues?
SP: Some of these counties have struggled with recruiting workers to staff polling places. So some have leaned into working with students who can serve as poll workers. Harris County started this kind of program where they brought in student poll workers, literally to bring in their technology expertise, because some of the poll workers didn’t have that expertise.
So what a creative way to bring young people in, to not only establish these roots of participation, but to use what their strength is. But you don’t see that in all of the other counties.
MM: Generally the best way to hold governments accountable really are the direct communications that citizens and constituents can make with their elected officials. People really under-appreciate this, but a handwritten letter, a typed letter, a phone call, an actual conversation, making an appointment and going and visiting your elected official, which everybody can do, makes a difference.
Legislators care about getting re-elected, and the people who re-elect them are their constituents, so they actually do care about what their constituents think. Signing a petition is a very easy thing to do, but elected officials care less about that. But when input from a voter is personal and heartfelt, they pay attention. And if you get your friends to call and go visit and write letters, that can make a difference too. Folks shouldn’t forget that that’s another way that they can actually make a difference.