Isabel Longoria
Following on to my interview with Chris Hollins, today I have for you a conversation with our brand new and first-ever Election Administrator in Harris County, Isabel Longoria. Longoria is a former legislative staffer who ran for City Council in District H in 2019 and lost in a runoff to incumbent CM Karla Cisneros. She was hired by Hollins to be part of the County Clerk’s election staff for the 2020 election, so when she stepped into the Administrator role it was mostly a continuation of what she had already been doing. If you’ve ever talked with Longoria before, you know she’s a highly detail-oriented person who can go deep into the weeds on policy and technical issues, and she has an abiding love for the elections process. We talked about all that and more:
We enter now into a fallow period for local elections – it’s an off year for Houston, and who knows what will happen with the HISD Trustees. I’ll do what I do with the races that are on the docket, but in the meantime if you think there’s someone I really ought to talk to and whose insights would be of interest to you and my other readers, let me know.
Very excited to her this interview and the ideas that Ms Longoria expressed for registration and voting.
Glad to have a dedicated public servant who is focused on improvement in all facets of the elections administration in Harris County.
Thank you both for the interview. I was a little surprised that the subject of redistricting didn’t come up. There have been no media reports on the fate of the Tax Office’s mapping team. This team interprets the Legislature’s district Plans and applies them to the voter management system. They also apply the continuous stream of annexations, new MUDs, new streets and changes to all other districts. Without this work the 2022 election will be seriously impaired. It’s the source of every ballot style in the County.
Voter_worker: We were under a time constraint, she was in the middle of something she needed to get back to, so I had to cut things short. I have a to do item to interview someone at the County about their redistricting priorities and plans, so I’ll make a note of that for when I do that interview.
Thank you! Redistricting is pretty thorny under the best of circumstance and as you pointed out in an earlier post we might have time issues because of the Census situation. This function of the Voter Registrar is somewhat under the radar and they do it well. The error which surfaced in the fall 2018 City of Baytown election is the only one I remember hearing about in years. Thanks again for these two very interesting interviews!