AUSTIN — The new GOP elections law gives broad new powers to the Texas secretary of state, and by extension Gov. Greg Abbott, who will choose its next leader.

Whomever the Republican governor picks could shape Texas elections for years to come.

When the law takes effect Dec. 2, the secretary of state will be newly empowered to fine counties up to $1,000 a day and to audit potentially years’ worth of their elections. The office will also have broader ability to pass on alleged voter fraud or missteps by election officials to the attorney general, who has made prosecuting election violations a top priority.

The law leaves much of the rule-writing up to the secretary of state, so the office will have discretion in how it wields the new power.

“We’ve turned what’s largely an administrative function that does a little bit of training ... into this power center of regulatory heft and administrative fines,” said Adam Haynes of the Texas Conference of Urban Counties.

The law’s backers say it makes sense for the secretary of state to have authority because it’s the highest election official in Texas.

“The important thing is to find a path to make sure you have got good top-down guidelines for election processes,” said Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston.

Overseeing elections is just one of the Texas secretary of state’s many tasks. But it’s increasingly becoming the most high profile as partisan battles over voting rights play out the national stage.

Vacant position

Politics derailed Abbott’s most recent picks for secretary of state. Both of them failed to get confirmed by the state Senate.

In 2019, Democrats blocked David Whitley’s nomination after he oversaw a botched attempt to purge voter rolls that wrongly flagged thousands of Texans as potential noncitizens.

This year, the GOP-led Senate Nominations Committee never even considered Ruth Ruggero Hughs, who left the office in May. Republicans have not explained why they passed on Hughs. But Democrats speculate it was her office’s oversight of the 2020 election, which saw Houston’s Harris County roll out novel early-voting methods now banned by the new GOP-backed elections law.

Abbott has yet to name a replacement. Spokeswoman Renae Eze said Abbott and his team continue to “carefully review all qualified applicants for Secretary of State to ensure the best representation for Texas.” Deputy Secretary of State Joe Esparza, a former Abbott staffer, is acting as interim. The office is still developing guidance for county election officials before the law kicks in later this year, spokesman Sam Taylor said.

The next secretary of state Abbott appoints is poised to oversee Texas’ first elections with the new law in place and likely won’t come up for Senate confirmation until after the 2022 cycle. Several major races are on the ballot next year, including the already contested primary races for governor, attorney general and agriculture commissioner.

Audit

How the secretary of state’s office will use its new powers remains to be seen. One of the biggest tasks the office will take on is auditing elections.

The office must audit four random Texas counties after each midterm and presidential election and review not only that contest, but all elections from the previous two years in what could be a massive and costly undertaking.

At least two of the audited counties must have 300,000 residents or more, meaning the state’s 18 largest counties will be checked far more regularly than the rest.

The law doesn’t say what type of election audit should be done or how quickly it must be completed, leaving those choices up to the secretary of state. The decision could determine whether the state follows Arizona in pursuing a GOP-led audit of 2020 results that’s been widely criticized as flawed.

“The lack of detail and guardrails to ensure that counties are treated fairly here is disturbing,” said Tommy Buser-Clancy, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “The obvious basis for a lot of these provisions is the ‘big lie’ and kind of furthering the seeds of distrust in our election system.”

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims of a rigged election after losing to Democrat Joe Biden.

Rep. Bryan Slaton, a Royse City Republican who added the audit requirement, did not respond to questions about what type of election review he had in mind. When proposing the idea on the House floor in August, Slaton said he had received lots of feedback from voters and constituents.

“Since the November election in 2020 people have been talking about audits and people have been talking and claiming there was fraud,” he said. “We just thought this would be good policy to implement to try to help ease concerns from both sides.”

Experts questioned the rationale of auditing two years’ worth of elections, since it’s considered a best practice to complete any review before the results are certified.

Taylor, the spokesman for the secretary of state, said the office is in the process of determining the audit scope and will have more information in the coming months. As required by the law, he said, it will include a review of all elections conducted by the county between 2020 and 2022 and of “federal offices all the way down to the local level.”

“These audits will ensure that voters can have confidence in the accuracy of the outcome of those elections,” Taylor said in a statement.

The secretary of state will also determine when to fine counties up to $1,000 a day for not properly maintaining their voter lists. A first violation calls for training, the second prompts an audit and the third triggers the fine. But it’s up to the secretary of state to write the rules, such as whether a county that racks up two violations in the first year would then face fines for all future offenses.

The office will also have more leeway in referring potential election law violations to the attorney general’s office. Where the law previously called on the office to pass on complaints it had received, staff can now refer their own discoveries.