a third of Houston completely flooded<\/a>.<\/p>\nIn 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.<\/p>\n
Houston didn\u2019t wait to be rescued. Houston rescued itself.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
This is the story I wanted to tell on Aug. 27, when nearly 70 Houstonians gathered for \u201cCome Hell or High Water: Voting in the Wake of Disasters and Disruptions,\u201d an evening hosted by Vet the Vote Houston to mark Harvey\u2019s anniversary and ask a hard question: What does that same instinct to show up for each other look like when the challenge isn\u2019t just a hurricane, but an election that needs to happen despite major damage and disruption in the wake of the storm?<\/p>\n
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\u2019s office. They\u2019re people who have studied or run elections through hurricanes, a global pandemic and equipment loss due to a huge fire, when it\u2019s crucial to figure out in real time how to keep every vote safe and counted.<\/p>\n
Watching the room, what struck me was how little separates \u201ccivic duty\u201d from \u201cneighborly duty.\u201d 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
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That\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the 2026 election cycle, we talk a lot about ballots and polling locations. We don\u2019t talk enough about the fact that it depends on ordinary people deciding to give up a Tuesday, or in our panelists\u2019 case, devote entire careers, to make sure the rest of us can vote.<\/p>\n
Some of the people who moved me most that night weren\u2019t on the stage at all. They were in the room. It was a Thursday evening \u2014 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\u2019s as essential as anything said from the podium.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the thing about this city that I hope never changes. We don\u2019t wait for someone else to fix what\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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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\u2019s election officials are ready for the 2026 midterms.<\/p>\n
Camellia Jackson leads Vet the Vote Houston, a nonpartisan poll worker recruitment initiative of We the Veterans and Military Families.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Poll workers set up curbside voting at the Sunnyside Multi-Service Center during the May 26 primary runoff. Melissa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-432273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}