Katy Residents Experienced Problems at the Polls

KATY MAGAZINE NEWS

November 12, 2022

By Natalie Cook Clark

Many Katy voters ran into problems at the polls Tuesday. From running out of paper, address discrepancies, and more; some Katy residents’ right to vote took a little extra determination.

Over a million (1,097,228) Harris County residents voted in this week’s midterm election and some Katy residents are saying they experienced difficulties casting their vote.

Turned Away from Voting

“My neighbor and I were both told we couldn’t vote at the Katy Civic Center,” says Katy resident Brittany Spurlock. Both she and her neighbor were told that their address in the system didn’t match the address on their driver’s license.

At 48 years old, Spurlock votes in every election and says she has never experienced this.

“I’m glad it happened to me,” says Spurlock. “I take my right to vote very seriously and feel very patriotic voting on election day.”

Spurlock says that the volunteer at the polling location was a sweet girl in the early twenties. She does not feel that she was doing anything nefarious. The volunteer’s mother actually came up to her and gave her a phone number to call.

“I stepped outside and called the number. It took a while to get through, but they confirmed that my address was correct in their system,” says Spurlock, who hasn’t moved in over 17 years. “I was told that multiple people were told the same thing from that location.”

Katy GOP Warned About Polls

The Harris County Republican Party alerted followers on Facebook that certain polls were reportedly having issues.

“We recommend you avoid the following polling locations because the Harris County Elections Administrator did not provide an adequate amount of ballot paper,” stated the Harris County Republican Party.

Katy’s Taylor High School was a polling location included in that list.

According to the county and Harris County Democratic Party chair Odus Evbagharv, a city audit will be conducted to see why such problems could occur.

"I can deal with the results, but it needs to be fair," says Spurlock.