Rep. Matt Shaheen’s nine-member committee will hear invited and public testimony on five interim charges — the first significant Texas House airing of election-administration questions ahead of the 2026 general election.
When: 11:00 AM, Thursday, May 14, 2026
Where: Room E2.012, Capitol Extension, Austin
Chair: Rep. Matt Shaheen, R–Plano (HD-66)
Vice Chair: Rep. John H. Bucy III, D–Austin
Live video: house.texas.gov/video-audio
Submit comments online: comments.house.texas.gov/home?c=c240
The Texas House Committee on Elections will gavel in at 11 a.m. Thursday for a public hearing covering the implementation of last year’s election-audit law, the statutory deadlines that govern Texas elections, and how the state polices its voter rolls for noncitizens.
Chaired by Rep. Matt Shaheen (R-Plano), the nine-member panel is working through interim charges issued by Speaker Dustin Burrows ahead of the 90th Legislature, which convenes in January 2027.
Thursday’s hearing is the committee’s first major interim sitdown of the spring and lands two weeks before Texans return to the polls for the May 26.
The first charge on the docket is oversight of Senate Bill 827, the 89th Legislature’s electronic-voting-system audit law, which directs counties to conduct standardized post-election reviews of voting equipment. The committee is tasked with “monitoring the implementation and associated rulemaking” of the statute and any deviation between the law’s text and the rules being written to execute it.
Three structural questions follow. The committee will examine Texas’s election timelines — the calendar of deadlines that runs from candidate filing to canvassing — and consider whether they need adjustment to improve administration and voter access. It will survey election transparency and ballot privacy, including which records are subject to the Public Information Act and how that interacts with the constitutional guarantee of a secret ballot. And under the heading “Citizenship and Voting,” it will examine voter registration and voter-roll maintenance.
The final charge, election administration staffing needs, asks the committee to study the recruitment crisis facing county election officials, who have struggled in recent cycles to find volunteers willing to work early-voting and election-day shifts amid an environment of public scrutiny and, in some counties, harassment.
Committee members
- Rep. Matt Shaheen, R–Plano (HD-66) — Chair
- Rep. John H. Bucy III, D–Austin — Vice Chair
- Rep. Carrie Isaac, R–Dripping Springs
- Rep. Valoree Swanson, R–Spring
- Rep. Steve Toth, R–The Woodlands
- Rep. Penny Morales Shaw, D–Houston
- Rep. Mihaela Plesa, D–Plano
- Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, D–Laredo
- Rep. Terry M. Wilson, R–Marble Falls