More than 435K people in Harris County voted in Tuesday's election, county clerk says

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) -- The Harris County Clerk's office says there were no major issues during Tuesday's election, a stark contrast from the last time Harris County hosted an election.

The last election had a lot of trouble, and it took a long time for the results to come in. This time around, things appeared to run smoothly.

More than 435,000 voters showed up at the polls, Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth said, and that includes more than 211,000 who voted in-person on Election Day itself.

The county clerk's office is now in charge of elections after Texas legislatures did away with the elections administrator position in Harris County.

SEE ALSO: Election monitors reveal no cases of voter discrimination at polls in Harris County, DOJ says

The U.S. Department of Justice appointed two attorneys to oversee any complaints in the Southern District of Texas on Election Day about voting rights concerns, threats of violence to election officials, or election fraud.

Officials are using a system called Service Now to report and fix any Election Day problems. There were reportedly more than 2,800 calls that came in Tuesday.

About 21% of those calls came from voters who were looking for polling locations, officials said. The other 79% came from voting centers and mostly concerned equipment set up and operation.

County officials said it appeared things went well, but they know next year's presidential election will require additional support.

"More election workers, more election workers, you will notice that to run elections in Harris County, it takes a lot of people. You are witnessing that tonight. So I would like to see more election workers recruited to learn the job, to be trained, to be a part of this operation because a year from now, we will be looking at twice the size we are doing tonight," Hudspeth said.

Houston's top two mayoral candidates, John Whitmire and Sheila Jackson Lee, are headed to a runoff election on Dec. 9. Typically, less voters show up for runoff elections.

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Houston voters narrowed down the 17-candidate field to State Sen. John Whitmire and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. Now, the top two candidates will go face-to-face in a Dec. 9 runoff election.