After receiving an extension, the Harris County Office of the Elections Administrator completed counting all ballots required by state law by 3:12 p.m.
Results from this count are unofficial and need to be canvassed by Commissioners Court. In the canvassing process, results are checked for discrepancies and verified as laid out in the Texas Election Code.
The elections office also submitted a reconciliation report to the Secretary of State's office, which includes the unofficial number of voters, ballots cast and the comparison of the two. The most recent report estimates 3,828 provisional ballots could be added to the final count, but the number is subject to change.
Posted 12:39 p.m.
The Harris County 133rd Civil District Court granted a request to extend the mail-in ballot counting period for the county as mail-in ballots remained unprocessed.
As of 10:48 a.m. on Nov. 10, Leah Shah, director of communications for the Harris County Office of the Elections Administrator, said in a statement the ballot board still needed to count roughly 800 mail-in ballots.
Per Sec. 66.053 of the Texas Election Code, precinct election returns and election materials must be returned to the canvassing authority for the election—which in Harris County is the Commissioners Court—within 24 hours of the polls closing. The county’s request to the district court filed before the 7 p.m. Nov. 9 deadline stated that “a small number of precinct election records, including mail-in ballots, remain outstanding and may not be processed and delivered within 24 hours of the polls closing.”
“Once it became clear the [ballot] board would not be able to complete processing mail ballots by the deadline, we met with both the presiding and alternate judge [at central count] regarding an extension of the deadline,” Shah said.
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The district court’s order granting the extension authorizes the county to continue counting ballots and ensures those ballots will not be invalidated. The court is slated to hold a conference at 2 p.m. Nov. 10 to determine the status of the ballot count.
