Poll workers set up curbside voting at the Sunnyside Multi-Service Center during the May 26 primary runoff.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Nine years ago Hurricane Harvey stalled over Houston, dropping more rain on this city than most of us will ever see again, leaving a third of Houston completely flooded.
In response, we saw nearly 30,000 water rescues, not necessarily by FEMA or the Coast Guard but by us: neighbors with boats, strangers with kayaks and even high schoolers wading through chest-deep water.
Houston didn’t wait to be rescued. Houston rescued itself.
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Houston shows up for each other regardless of the situation, and that same attitude carries over into how we conduct our local elections and how we are preparing for the 2026 midterm elections.
This is the story I wanted to tell on Aug. 27, when nearly 70 Houstonians gathered for “Come Hell or High Water: Voting in the Wake of Disasters and Disruptions,” an evening hosted by Vet the Vote Houston to mark Harvey’s anniversary and ask a hard question: What does that same instinct to show up for each other look like when the challenge isn’t just a hurricane, but an election that needs to happen despite major damage and disruption in the wake of the storm?
For the people on our panel, it was not an abstract question. They included Chris Hollins, the Houston city controller and the former Harris County Clerk who ran the 2020 election. He was joined by Melissa Marschall from Rice University, Chris McGinn of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, and Esther Cardenas and Jennifer Ballard, who have both administered elections for the Harris County clerk’s office. They’re people who have studied or run elections through hurricanes, a global pandemic and equipment loss due to a huge fire, when it’s crucial to figure out in real time how to keep every vote safe and counted.
Watching the room, what struck me was how little separates “civic duty” from “neighborly duty.” The same people who show up with a boat during a flood are often the same people who show up to work the polls during an election — not because someone paid them enough to do it, but because they understand that elections are also a kind of infrastructure. They only hold up if enough people decide to hold it up.
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That’s ultimately what Vet the Vote Houston exists to do: recruit and support the poll workers who keep that infrastructure standing across Harris, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Austin, Chambers, Liberty, Brazoria, Galveston and Waller counties.
Ahead of the 2026 election cycle, we talk a lot about ballots and polling locations. We don’t talk enough about the fact that it depends on ordinary people deciding to give up a Tuesday, or in our panelists’ case, devote entire careers, to make sure the rest of us can vote.
Some of the people who moved me most that night weren’t on the stage at all. They were in the room. It was a Thursday evening — the kind of night most people reserve for decompressing after a long week, not for sitting through a panel on election administration. Nearly 70 people made a different choice. They came on their own time, because they believed the conversation mattered enough to be there for it. That is its own kind of showing up, and it’s as essential as anything said from the podium.
That’s the thing about this city that I hope never changes. We don’t wait for someone else to fix what’s broken or protect what matters. We do it ourselves, together, whether the water is rising in the streets or the stakes are rising at the ballot box.
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Houston has always been a city that rescues itself, and our elections are no exception. Nine years after Harvey, our election officials and dedicated citizen poll workers have built a voting infrastructure designed to weather any storm. They have the experience, the resolve, and the community support to protect every vote. Come hell or high water, Houston’s election officials are ready for the 2026 midterms.
Camellia Jackson leads Vet the Vote Houston, a nonpartisan poll worker recruitment initiative of We the Veterans and Military Families.