Votebeat

2026 primary elections start off with a Texas-sized mess

2026-03-09T09:00:00+00:00

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Election officials, start your engines.

The 2026 midterm elections officially kicked off last week with primary elections in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas. It was the first big test for hundreds of candidates who are vying to take up residence in Washington, D.C., and state capitals next year — but it was also a dress rehearsal for election officials in a year expected to pose unusual and daunting administrative challenges.

And things were a little rocky.

While the election went smoothly for a majority of voters and jurisdictions, thousands of voters were affected by problems in Texas in particular.

Some of those — like a poll-worker shortage in South Texas or malfunctioning electronic pollbooks in northeastern North Carolina and El Paso, Texas — were routine, inevitable in a country with thousands of election jurisdictions and just as many things that can go wrong.

But others resulted from Republican-driven changes to voting procedures that Republicans argued would make the elections more secure. And in that sense, the messy primary day was a reminder that the GOP’s proposals to suddenly and dramatically overhaul voting this November carry real risks of harm to voters, election officials, and anyone affected by the results.

Sudden shift to precinct-based voting causes voter confusion

Entering this year, motivated by a trumped-up belief that voting machines are not trustworthy, a handful of county Republican parties in Texas considered counting their primary ballots by hand. (In Texas, county political parties have the authority to decide how to run their own primaries, although they usually outsource the actual work to the government.) However, hand-counting thousands of ballots requires a ton of manpower, and two of the biggest county GOPs considering it — Dallas’ and Williamson’s — ultimately decided the idea wasn’t feasible.

Instead, party leaders in those two counties settled on a compromise: conduct Election Day voting at neighborhood-based precincts, which Republicans consider to be more secure than the counties’ usual setup of a smaller number of large vote centers where anyone in the county could vote. Crucially, under state law, the county GOPs’ decision forced Dallas and Williamson Democrats to switch to precinct-based voting as well.

The result was mass confusion, as at least several hundred, and potentially thousands of, voters showed up at former vote centers where they usually cast their ballots only to be told they had to go to a different location. According to Kardal Coleman, the chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party, at least 359 Democratic primary voters had been turned away from two major polling places as of 11:30 a.m. on Election Day. That number, of course, does not capture anyone who was turned away after 11:30 a.m., anyone who was turned away from the dozens of other polling places, and any Republicans who were turned away.

Ominously, the chaos ensued even after election officials and parties made a concerted effort to educate voters. Dallas County spent $1 million on mailing notices to voters and airing digital and TV ads to get the word out about the relocated polling places. Both the Dallas County Democrats and Republicans said they had publicized the changes to their voters. And Williamson County conducted interviews with local media and posted on social media and on their website about it.

It’s worth emphasizing that many people who were initially turned away from the polls probably eventually found their correct polling place and were able to cast a ballot. Despite midday fears on Election Day, turnout in the Democratic primary in Dallas and Williamson counties was in line with the statewide average. Based on unofficial results from Wednesday evening, the number of votes cast statewide in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate was 48% of the number of Kamala Harris voters in the state in the 2024 general election. In Dallas County, that number was 54%; in Williamson, it was 44%.

Voters got some relief when a judge ordered polling places for the Democratic primary to stay open two hours later, until 9 p.m., in Dallas because of the issue. A different judge also ordered two precincts in Williamson County to stay open for both parties until 10 p.m. because of long lines. However, within hours, the Texas Supreme Court temporarily stayed both of those orders, creating doubt about whether ballots cast by voters who got in line after the regular 7 p.m. poll-closing time would count. (Those voters all cast provisional ballots, allowing them to be separated from the undisputed votes.)

As of Friday night, the Texas Supreme Court still had not issued its final rulings on whether those ballots should be counted. A significant number of votes hang in the balance: In Dallas County, 2,316 provisional ballots were cast in the Democratic primary, and 541 were cast across both primaries in Williamson — although those numbers also include any provisional ballots cast for other reasons, like the voter’s eligibility being unclear.

Hand-counting ballots leads to delayed results

Meanwhile, Republicans in three counties — Calhoun, Eastland, and Gillespie — actually went through with their plans to rely on hand-counting. Under state law, this compelled them to use precincts instead of vote centers on Election Day, too, which created headaches, at least in Eastland County, which had previously used countywide sites. Poll workers at one site told Votebeat’s Natalia Contreras, who was on the ground in Eastland, that at least 89 voters had shown up to vote that day and learned it was the wrong location. At least one was ultimately unable to cast a ballot.

The sudden switch to a precinct-based system and separate primaries for Democrats and Republicans also meant that Eastland County did not have enough accessible voting equipment to put at each precinct — a violation of federal law. At least one voter showed up on Tuesday asking to use the equipment and was told it was unavailable, the county election administrator told Contreras.

And then the hand counts themselves, as they are wont to do, severely delayed the reporting of election results. Gillespie County Republicans did not report full results to the secretary of state until after 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning, long after most counties, as well as Gillespie County Democrats (who were still able to machine-count), had gone to bed. And that was actually relatively speedy: Eastland County didn’t submit its Republican primary results to the secretary of state until around 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday, and Calhoun County did not finish reporting results until Friday morning, after the county GOP failed to deliver its results within 24 hours of polls closing as required by state law.

Taking a long time to report results is annoying, of course, to those of us who tune in on election night hoping to learn who won the election. But more seriously, it can decrease public trust in the election — an argument, ironically, most often deployed by Republicans when complaining about the slow pace of vote-counting of mail ballots in states like California.

Worst of all, research has found that counting ballots by hand is more prone to error than doing it by machine. When Gillespie County Republicans hand-counted their ballots in the 2024 primary, they ended up needing to make corrections in 12 out of 13 precincts. We don’t know yet how accurate the 2026 hand counts in Texas were, but their spotty track record at least raises the specter of the worst-case scenario: that the election results won’t reflect how people actually voted.

In the face of some undeniable problems that disenfranchised at least a few voters, even some Republicans are asking themselves if their prescriptions were worse than the disease. That might be the kind of question it’s better to ask beforehand.

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Calhoun County Republicans miss state-mandated results deadline because of hand counting

2026-03-06T23:29:23+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Calhoun County finished submitting its primary election results to the state Friday morning after county Republicans, who hand counted their primary ballots, missed a deadline in state law requiring them to submit early-voting and Election Day results to the county no later than 24 hours after polls closed, a county election official said.

Mary Ann Orta, the elections administrator in the South Texas county, which includes Port Lavaca, and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office both confirmed the county GOP missed the deadline and its results were submitted to the state Friday morning. The results for county Democrats, who used electronic voting equipment to tabulate ballots, were submitted to the state not long after the polls closed on Tuesday night, Orta said.

In Texas, political parties decide at the county level how their primaries will be administered, and Calhoun Republicans chose to hand count ballots this year, including those cast early and at 11 Republican precincts on Election Day, a labor-intensive process.

In a text message responding to questions from Votebeat, Calhoun County GOP Chair Russell Cain said the party “would like to thank the Calhoun County Elections Office and the Texas Secretary of State for their continual support and guidance during the Republican Primary Handcount. We had about a hundred people devoted to this endeavor and appreciate their dedication and resilience throughout the counting process.”

He did not immediately respond to questions about exactly when workers completed counting, or about the missed deadline to report results. There were 3,153 ballots cast in the county’s GOP primary, according to data posted on the Texas secretary of state’s website Friday.

Failure to provide results by the 24-hour deadline is a class B misdemeanor, which carries fines of up to $2,000 and the potential for jail time. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment on how the law is enforced, or the potential legal implications of the party’s failure to meet the deadline. But Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the agency, referred Votebeat to a section of the Texas election code that says the canvassing authority — in this case, the county party chair and the party’s executive committee — can seek a court order to force the delivery of records and supervision of the counting process. However, local prosecutors generally have the authority to investigate and prosecute any election crimes or violations, according to the election code.

Orta did not have many answers Friday morning. She and her staff have been sleep-deprived since Tuesday, as they waited for all the information necessary to report results to the state.

“I’m exhausted and still trying to make heads or tails of everything we’ve got,” Orta said.

This year, Republicans in Gillespie and Eastland counties also hand counted ballots. In Gillespie, the process was complete at around 5 a.m. Wednesday. In Eastland, election officials did not report totals to the state until about 5:45 p.m. Wednesday, and said they had to obtain a court order to access a secured box containing ballots after a form containing tallies from one precinct was mistakenly locked inside.

In the 2022 primary, Harris County failed to report results by the state-mandated deadline. Election officials cited issues with new voting equipment and a two-page ballot as the reasons why it took almost 30 hours to complete the vote counts. The county sought a court order to extend the deadline. No one was charged with a misdemeanor, but the county’s chief election official resigned days later, after it emerged that her office failed to include thousands of ballots in the total vote count.

In some cases, county GOP officials have cited the pressure of the results deadline as a reason they decided against hand counting.

Correction, March 11, 2026, 1:27 p.m. ET: A previous version of this story incorrectly said Victoria is located in Calhoun County. It is located in Victoria County.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Eastland’s hand count of Republican primary ballots stretched into Wednesday as residents wait on results

2026-03-04T17:07:33+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Update, March 4: At about 5:45 p.m. Wednesday, Eastland County elections administrator Temi Nichols confirmed she had submitted all election results to the state. Republican workers finished hand counting all ballots around 2 p.m. Wednesday, Nichols said, and she obtained a court order permitting her to access a secured ballot box in order to retrieve tallies from one precinct that had been mistakenly locked inside. The county’s district attorney, sheriff, and county judge witnessed the opening of the box, Nichols said.

Just after midnight, as Election Day became Wednesday, workers at a polling place in the city of Rising Star called Eastland County election administrator Temi Nichols with a problem.

They told Nichols some workers tasked with hand counting the GOP ballots cast at that location had decided to call it quits, she told a reporter afterwards, and she tried to talk those on the phone out of joining them “Please don’t load up and take off,” Nichols said.

The workers on the other end of the phone said they weren’t sure how to read the tally sheets the other workers had left behind or fill out the required paperwork, among other things, according to Nichols. They asked her if they could go home and finish counting in the morning.

Nichols told them that according to state law, they could not stop once counting had begun. She told them to call Robin Hayes, the Eastland County Republican Party Chair, in charge of administering the county’s GOP primary election, and “tell her y’all need help.”

Eastland Republicans months ago decided to hand count primary ballots this year instead of using electronic voting equipment. Election officials and voting experts have found that hand counting large numbers of ballots is expensive, labor-intensive, slower to produce results, and more prone to human error than machine tabulation, though both methods can be accurate.

Supporters of hand counting say it increases public confidence, and some Republicans have backed the method in recent years as President Donald Trump and others have pushed unsupported claims about the reliability of voting machines.

Two election workers on March 3 transfer early voting ballots from Eastland County Courthouse to the Judge Scott Bailey Event Center, to be counted by hand.

Hand-counted results still not complete early Wednesday

Nichols reported final machine-tabulated results for the county’s Democratic primary to the state by 11 p.m. Tuesday night. But hand-tallied results from the first GOP Election Day sites only began arriving at her office a little after 9:30 p.m. Shortly after 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, Hayes had delivered results from at least three sites, including the Rising Star location whose workers had called shortly after midnight.

As of 9 a.m. Wednesday, Nichols was still waiting for some GOP results, including or workers to finish tallying results from ballots cast early in person and from Election Day ballots cast at the county courthouse, the site that saw the largest number of voters in the county.

In addition, Nichols said, she had received a secured ballot box and other materials from a polling place in Cisco, but had not gotten the required form listing vote totals from that precinct with it.

At around 9 a.m., Nichols said the election judge from that site confirmed she had locked the form in the now-sealed ballot box because she had mistakenly believed that was what was required. By law, the secured box cannot be reopened for six months. Nichols said opening the box so the form can be retrieved will require a court order, but she needs to retrieve the form in order to report complete results.

The county’s election results must, by law, be returned to county election officials within 24 hours after polls close. “I can’t report anything to the state yet. I don’t have all the totals,” Nichols said.

Hayes, the Eastland County Republican party chair, did not respond to multiple texts and phone calls requesting comment from Votebeat on Tuesday and Wednesday. She declined to answer questions or comment on the party’s administration of the hand count while dropping off materials at the county’s election office at about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday. She last month told Votebeat she had trained around 90 people for the hand count effort.

Nichols, who became the county elections administrator last summer and was overseeing her first major election in the job, said the primary “feels like we ran two elections, double the work, double the time.”

Election workers deliver materials from polling locations around 9:30 p.m. on March 3, at the Eastland County Courthouse.

Hand counting causes logistical headaches

In Texas, political parties decide at the county level how their primaries will be administered. Several other county Republican parties considered hand counting but ultimately decided against it, worried about cost, finding enough workers, and a state law that requires results to be reported within 24 hours. Failing to do so could result in a misdemeanor charge.

Some of the state’s least populous counties use the method, and mid-sized Eastland and Gillespie counties also decided to go ahead. Gillespie County hand counted primary ballots in 2024, taking nearly 24 hours to tally roughly 8,000 ballots and finding they later had to fix errors between Election Day and the final canvass, after accuracy issues emerged.

This year, Gillespie decided to hand count Election Day ballots only, which took until around 3 a.m. In Calhoun County, in South Texas, Republicans also hand counted early voting and Election Day ballots, and Amy Ochoa, the county deputy elections administrator, said the count was still ongoing as of 6 a.m. Wednesday.

Eastland County has more than 12,500 registered voters and is around 100 miles west of Fort Worth. In 2022, the last midterm election year, 3,217 voters cast ballots in the Republican primary. This year, about 1,300 Republicans and about 185 Democrats voted early. On Tuesday, Nichols reported a total of 303 Democrats voted in the primary. That number for the Republicans isn’t yet available.

In addition to choosing to hand count, Eastland County Republicans also decided to use paper poll books to check in voters and have voters hand-mark their choices rather than use ballot-marking devices, though both methods use paper ballots.

Eastland County had used the state’s countywide polling place program — which allows voters to cast ballots at any polling place in the county on Election Day — since at least 2013. In addition, the local political parties had for years agreed to host joint primaries. Both of these methods allowed the county to save money by staffing and equipping fewer polling locations that all voters could use. But Republicans’ decision to hand count forced all voters in the county, including Democrats, to cast primary ballots at their neighborhood precincts, instead of any location in the county.

The changes also created logistical problems, Nichols said. Federal accessibility laws require each voting site to have a machine with a ballot-marking device available for disabled voters, though anyone who asks to use it may do so. In the past, both parties used machines for all voters, and machine access wasn’t an issue.

But splitting the primary meant the county didn’t have enough accessible voting equipment. Nichols said the county only had enough for the Democratic sites, where all voters were relying on the machines, and three of nine Republican precincts. She tried unsuccessfully to obtain more from neighboring counties and the manufacturer. On Election Day, at least one voter, at a site in Gorman, asked for a machine and was told it was not available, Nichols told Votebeat Wednesday.

Voters walk into the Rising Star Volunteer Fire Dept., a polling location for the primary, on March 3 in Eastland County, Texas.

Confused voters went to the wrong voting locations

As in Dallas County, where Republicans also forced a switch from countywide to precinct-based voting sites this year, the changes appear to have confused many voters.

All morning and into the afternoon, Nichols and her deputy, Donna Fagan, fielded calls from voters confused about where to vote. They also answered call after call from election workers trying to help voters who had turned up at the wrong polling location and needed to be redirected to the correct one.

In Eastland, the county seat, election workers at the courthouse polling location said they told at least 89 voters that they were at the wrong polling location that day, from when they began keeping track at 10:30 a.m. until polls closed.

One of them, Mikalynn May-Hall, told Votebeat she’s just not going to vote. She works near the courthouse and her assigned precinct is 20 miles away in Gorman. After work, she said she’s traveling to Abilene. “I always try to do my civic duty, but I guess it just won’t happen this year,” she said. May-Hall added that she lost track of time and wasn’t able to cast her ballot early and she was unaware that everyone had to vote at their neighborhood precinct.

At the Rising Star polling site around noon, one Republican primary voter, James Bryant, had to call his job to let them know he would be late. Bryant, who works in Abilene, more than 50 miles away, told Votebeat he’d originally tried to vote in Cisco, 20 miles north of Rising Star.

Bryant said he “had no idea” the primary would require him to vote at an assigned precinct rather than a countywide site, as he’d done for years. He added he also thought it was “odd that I had to say whether I was a Republican or Democrat. It used to be all together.”

Deena Nichols and Patsy Copeland, both of Cisco, both said they had gotten used to voting on the machines and didn’t like having to hand-mark their ballot, which had 41 separate contests this year. Otherwise, they said, their voting experience went smoothly, “Everything was very well explained” by the election workers, Copeland said.

‘I don’t know how much longer I can hang on’

At one point late Tuesday night, Nichols said some workers contacted her to ask whether she could just take the ballots and tabulate them electronically.

But such a pivot would be difficult, and Nichols told Votebeat that Hayes assured her the party would complete the hand count.

Once the counting of ballots begins, under state law, it can’t stop. If there were somehow no one left willing or able to keep counting, then Hayes, the GOP chair, would need to seek a court order to switch the method of counting to electronic tabulation, said Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

Eastland County election officials Donna Fagan and Temi Nichols inside the elections office shortly after midnight on March 4, 2026.

In addition, Nichols would then have to test the voting equipment for accuracy before tallying, as required by law before every election where electronic equipment is used to count votes. That’s true even though the county has already done the required testing for the Democratic primary, because the Republican primary is legally a separate election, Nichols said.

Once there are results, Texas law does not require an automatic post-election audit for these party-run hand counts. Any questions about accuracy would have to be resolved by the canvass on March 12.

Fagan had been making sure that Nichols stayed hydrated, ate, and took breaks in order to stay alert throughout the night.

“We’re gonna get through this, Temi,” Fagan told Nichols often.

Sleep-deprived and exhausted at around 7 a.m. Wednesday, Nichols stared at her computer screen, and said “I don’t know how much longer I can hang on.”

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Despite fewer ballots than in 2024, the Gillespie County GOP’s second hand count takes nearly as long

2026-03-04T12:59:13+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

FREDERICKSBURG, Texas — When Gillespie County Republicans abandoned voting machines and hand-counted ballots in the 2024 primary election, it took until 4 a.m., required corrections in nearly every precinct, and fractured the local Republican Party. And in 2026, they did it again.

On Tuesday, election workers once again gathered in this Hill Country county to tally Republican primary votes by hand. This time, the counting and tallying stretched until nearly 3 a.m., and county election officials did not send their report to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office until after 5 a.m. Whether the results are accurate may not be clear for days.

Research shows hand-counting ballots typically takes more workers and time than machine tabulation and produces more discrepancies, though both methods can be accurate. Supporters say it increases transparency and confidence. Republicans here — and in Eastland County, which also hand-counted its primary ballots this year — opted into the more laborious process amid mistrust of voting machines in the wake of claims by President Donald Trump and others that they manipulated votes in the 2020 election. No evidence has emerged to support that.

The Gillespie County GOP’s undertaking this year, though, was not as ambitious as two years ago. After determining they did not have enough workers to hand-count every ballot cast in this year’s primary, party leaders scaled back their plan. Unlike in 2024, when early votes were also counted by hand, this year those ballots were tabulated by machine. Only Election Day ballots were counted by hand at each of the county’s 13 precincts.

Amid a fiercely fought primary for U.S. Senate, along with more than 40 other contested races, just under 3,000 ballots were ultimately hand-counted — far fewer than in 2024, when more than 8,000 ballots were counted entirely by hand. Everyone involved — including county officials — said things went more smoothly this time, with fewer of the reconciliation errors that made the 2024 canvass frustrating for all involved.

Even so, the process stretched nearly as late as it did in 2024.

Some precincts began counting Tuesday morning. By 11 p.m., most of the county’s votes had been reported. But results from the final precinct — Precinct 5, in Harper — did not arrive at the central elections office until 2:47 a.m.

“Sorry to keep y’all waiting,” a bleary-looking Neill Northington, the Harper precinct’s chair, said as he sat down with county election officials to review his paperwork. He and his teams finished counting around midnight, but completing the form and checking the math kept him there for longer.

The Gillespie County elections office, pictured on March 3, 2025. County election administrators and Republican Party officials worked until 5am the following morning to hand count and then reconcile ballots in the county's 13 precincts.

Northington had backed hand-counting in 2024 — he said he was the first to propose it — but opposed it this year. Two years ago, he wanted a way to test the county’s systems. When it showed no meaningful difference in race outcomes, he felt the point had been made.

“I don’t need the bank to keep a paper ledger for me,” he said. While he’d like hand-counting to be an option for auditing electronically tabulated results, he said he’s satisfied the systems in Gillespie County are trustworthy.

After Republicans turned in their tally sheets, county staff still had nearly two hours of work left.

Unlike electronic tabulation, which automatically generates the reports required by the state, hand-counted results arrive as separate tally sheets from each of the 13 precincts. The totals for more than 40 races then had to be entered manually and added together.

Manpower — or lack thereof — was likely why it took so long for precincts to deliver their results to the county. The 2024 effort involved roughly 350 people working in shifts. This year, party leaders said about 60 people had signed up as of a few days before Election Day. It was unclear Tuesday how many ultimately showed up. Final totals are expected to be available in the coming weeks after each worker submits the paperwork to get paid for their efforts.

To Bruce Campbell, the county GOP chair, the timeline told its own story. With significantly fewer ballots to count than in 2024, he said, the fact that results again stretched toward the early morning hours underscored what he had warned for months: The party did not have enough manpower to sustain the effort at the scale some activists envisioned.

Campbell disputes claims from some hand-count supporters that ample numbers of workers were available and that lists showed sufficient staffing. He said he never received documentation that the county had enough trained counters to conduct a full hand count.

Republicans divided on hand-counting

At the county elections office Tuesday night, the divide over hand counting showed in small moments.

Brock Graef, 25, arrived to observe the process on behalf of his mother, who is running for county treasurer. Daniel Herbort, 35, came for his wife, a candidate for district clerk. Neither had served as a poll watcher before.

Just after 8 p.m., as Democratic ballots were tallied inside — Republican ballots would not start arriving for more than an hour — Graef called hand-counting “kind of stupid.”

“We’re out here trying to modernize this county,” he said, “and here we are hand-counting ballots like it’s 1952.”

Herbort was more sympathetic — “kind of,” he said — but appeared less certain after hearing about 2024’s discrepancies.

Across the county, views remained sharply divided.

Sheila Scuggs, a captain in Precinct 3, called the night a good experience. In Precinct 12, poll worker Cody Lawson said they had “plenty, too many” counters. Tom Marshall, the chair of Precinct 1, argued that redesigned tally sheets helped prevent the transcription mistakes he said caused most of last cycle’s errors.

“I myself made four of them,” he said, referring to the 2024 errors.

Others were unconvinced.

Betty Hahn, the precinct chair for Precinct 9, was against the hand count, as she was in 2024. That year, her precinct was the only one that reported no discrepancies. “If I’m going to do something,” she said, “I do it right.”

Scott Netherland, the election judge for Precinct 6, called hand-counting “less secure” than machine tabulation because it lacks built-in safeguards and clear chain-of-custody protections. In 2024, he told Votebeat his “heart sank” after he realized in the hours after finishing the count that he’d miscounted the totals in seven separate races.

“That was our trial [run],” he said of last cycle’s hand count. “We could have been done three hours ago” if the ballots had been scanned instead, he said at around 11 p.m. while waiting for county officials to process his tally.

Charlotte Belsick, the precinct chair for Precinct 8, called hand-counting “unnecessary in Gillespie.” As she spoke Tuesday night, an official from the Gillespie County Democratic Party approached Belsick to say goodbye. That party had already finished its machine-tabulated count and reported results to the state. “Oh, you mean they got done quickly because they scanned the ballots?” Belsick replied.

The hand count has become a proxy for a broader struggle inside the county GOP. Campbell, who says the practice is unnecessary, faced a challenge in Tuesday’s primary from a candidate aligned with the pro-hand-count faction. With all precincts reporting, Campbell was trailing 39% to 61% in unofficial returns.

Whether this year’s scaled-back effort avoided the discrepancies seen in 2024 will not be clear until the results are canvassed in the coming days. Last cycle, adjustments were required in 12 of 13 precincts.

Texas law does not require an automatic post-election audit for these party-run hand counts. If mistakes were made, they will surface only if someone identifies them during canvass — or if candidates request scrutiny.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

When will Texas primary results come in? Here’s what to expect.

2026-03-03T01:08:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Tuesday is primary day in Texas, and voters can expect to see some unofficial results not long after polls close at 7 p.m.

Election officials across the state will begin posting early voting totals to give Texans a first glimpse of results. But knowing the official outcome of the election will take longer, as election officials follow a long list of procedures to ensure your vote is counted accurately.

In large counties such as Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, and others, where election workers and officials will be coordinating the counting of Election Day ballots coming in from hundreds of voting locations that are miles apart, reporting of results will be slower. And in some counties, including Gillespie, west of Austin, and Eastland, west of Fort Worth, results are likely to take longer because Republicans are counting their ballots by hand.

Primary voters frustrated and confused after Dallas County switches to precinct-based voting

This isn’t the first time Republicans have counted ballots by hand during the primary. Gillespie County Republicans hand-counted thousands of ballots in 2024. The endeavor took hundreds of people and nearly 24 hours to complete. Officials there later found they’d made errors.

The efforts this year in both Gillespie and Eastland counties have already faced hurdles, and with highly contested primary contests for the state’s U.S. Senate race on both the Democratic and Republican ballots, election administrators and party officials in both counties are under pressure to ensure they meet the state’s 24-hour deadline to report results.

“This is a very tight race, and very much could go down to the wire. Margins here matter, and a slower count is likely to put a lot more uncertainty around the final result,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

He added that, although Eastland and Gillespie aren’t the most populous counties, hand-counts introduce “significant risks of human error.”

“People get tired, they lose concentration, and they make mistakes,” he said.

Here’s what you need to know about when to expect primary election results.

It’s 7 p.m. on Election Day and polls are closed. What’s next?

Voters can expect many counties to begin reporting early-voting results shortly after 7 p.m. This batch of results would include only early-voting ballots and mail ballots received up to that point. In counties with a population of more than 100,000, election officials are allowed to begin counting received mail-in ballots after polls close on the last day of early voting (in this case, Friday, Feb. 27), to get a head start on reporting results. Smaller counties may begin that process on the morning of Election Day.

In Eastland County, where Republicans are counting all ballots by hand, the tallying of early voting results is set to begin an hour after the polls open today. Depending on how many ballots were cast and how many people are gathered to count them, Republicans in Eastland, especially, may not see early voting results for hours after polls close.

In Gillespie County, Republicans are only hand-counting ballots cast on Election Day, so the county will likely report early voting results shortly after polls close.

What about results from Election Day voting?

The counting process for votes cast on Election Day can only begin after polls close and voting has ended. Polling places on Election Day are open until 7 p.m., but some locations could still have people waiting in line at closing time.

By law, those voters must get the opportunity to cast their ballots. In previous years, some voters have had to wait several hours to cast their ballots on Election Day, such as during the 2020 primaries, when the lines extended for hours after closing time.

This can delay the reporting of election results.

Once all ballots are cast at a voting location, polling location supervisors must follow a series of security measures. Before leaving the polling location, they must fill out paperwork detailing the number of ballots counted by ballot scanning machines and the number of voters who checked in to vote. They must then carefully pack up all ballots, paperwork, and voting equipment and transport them all back to the county’s central counting station — the place where ballots cast on Election Day are tallied.

In Gillespie and Eastland, the process will be slightly different because, by law, the hand counting of votes must take place at each polling location. Once that’s done, they’ll have to follow those same security measures before transporting ballots, materials, and results to local party and county election officials, who will then submit them to the state.

In large counties, getting ballots and equipment back to the main counting station can take more time and delay the election results. For example, in Harris County, the third most populous county in the country, some election results come in from polling sites located 40 minutes away from the county election headquarters. To speed up the process, Harris and other large counties have more than one counting station where election workers can drop off their materials to get the vote counting started.

Once election workers turn everything in, county election administrators then review and verify the information from each polling site, and counties must post the comparison of the number of voters and the number of ballots cast on their election websites.

How are votes gathered to produce results?

By state law, Election Day totals must be submitted to the state within 24 hours after polls close.

Once vote counting has begun, it cannot stop until it’s done. In large counties, election officials will work in shifts in case counting extends into the early morning hours. Once the count is complete, election administrators will manually enter totals for every race into the statewide election management system, known as TEAM.

The Secretary of State’s Office then reviews each county’s reports to ensure the information is correct before unofficial election night results are finalized. If there are any discrepancies between the data posted on a county website and the state’s system, the Secretary of State’s Office will with the local officials who entered the data to ensure the correct information is included in the state’s unofficial reporting of election night results.

Why are election night results “unofficial”?

The results calculated and reported out on election night are unofficial because they do not yet reflect a final count of all ballots cast. That’s because counties still must account for late-arriving mail-in ballots, ballots from military or overseas voters, and provisional ballots. The deadlines for receiving different kinds of ballots vary, but all must be reviewed and counted or rejected by March 12, according to the election law calendar.

Each party’s state chair then does a statewide canvass of races by March 15. At that point, statewide primary results become official and final.

That said, election-night counts will include the vast majority of ballots cast, and will likely give us reliable projections of the winners much earlier, in all but the closest of races.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

How the plan to hand count ballots in Eastland, Texas, could affect voting access

2026-02-25T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

EASTLAND, Texas — On Monday, a group of four people spent more than an hour at a table inside a realtor’s office, hand counting the results of two races on 100 sample ballots. It was only a week before Tuesday’s primary election, and for this small group, it was their first time practicing to tally votes by hand.

They counted in batches of 25 and used different colored markers to keep track of where one counted batch ended and a new one began. They also used laminated tally sheets, which allowed them to erase and remark them if they made any errors. The group twice marked a vote for the wrong candidate, an error that meant they had to go back and start over and correct their laminated sheets.

But on Election Day, “you won’t be able to erase the errors on the sheet. That’s why we practice,” said Robin Hayes, the county’s GOP chair, who was training the group.

Hayes hasn’t yet participated in an official hand count herself, but said she’s attended trainings to learn how to do it and has been preparing and training other volunteers for months.

After the group finished, Hayes reminded them that on Election Day, when there will be at least 41 races on the Republican primary ballot, they’ll have to minimize the chatter and focus on counting. “This was only two races. Remember that there’s more,” Hayes said.

Donna Smith, one of the trainees, gasped at that. “Ok, we’re gonna have to stay on task,” she said.

Robin Hayes, the Eastland County Republican Party chair leads a hand count training with county residents on Feb. 23, 2026. The party voted last fall to hand count all of the GOP's primary ballots. Hayes said she's recruited about 90 people to count ballots on Election Day.

Hand counting poses bigger costs, logistical challenges

Eastland County Republicans voted last fall to ditch electronic voting equipment and instead hand count all of their primary ballots. They’ll be using paper poll books to check in voters, and expect voters to hand mark their choices on paper ballots rather than using a ballot-marking device. And instead of having a joint primary with the Democrats, as they’ve done for years, Republicans have chosen to split everything: staff, equipment and materials. Democrats in the county are still planning to use the electronic voting equipment to cast and to tabulate their ballots.

Hand counting is no small endeavor. Election officials and voting experts have warned that hand counting large numbers of ballots is expensive, labor-intensive, slower to produce results, and more prone to human error than machine tabulation. But some Republicans across Texas have backed the method in recent years as President Donald Trump and others have pushed unsupported claims about the reliability of voting machines.

In Texas, political parties decide at the county level how their primaries will be administered. Other county Republican parties, including Dallas, considered hand-counting, but ultimately decided against it, worried about cost, finding enough workers, and a state law that requires results to be reported within 24 hours. Failing to do so could result in a misdemeanor charge.

The only two counties planning to hand count this year are Eastland and Gillespie. In 2024, Gillespie Republicans hand counted more than 8,000 ballots. That endeavour took nearly 24 hours and led to errors in tallies that officials later had to fix. Gillespie Republicans this month scaled back their plans and said they will only hand count ballots cast on Election Day because, officials said, they weren’t able to recruit enough workers to count ballots cast during early voting, which ends Friday.

Eastland’s plan, meanwhile, has created major logistical problems, Temi Nichols, the county’s elections administrator, said.

Eastland County has used the state’s countywide polling place program — which allows voters to cast ballots at any polling place in the county on Election Day — since at least 2013. In addition, the local political parties had for years agreed to host joint primaries. Both of these methods allowed the county to save money by staffing and equipping fewer polling locations that all voters could use.

But Republicans’ decision to hand count and hold a separate primary from Democrats means that won’t be the case this year, since both political parties have to agree in order for the county to use countywide polling places. Voters casting primary ballots must do so at their local precincts. In addition, the county is struggling to comply with federal accessibility laws requiring that each polling location has at least one accessible voting machine available for voters who need it. That hasn’t been an issue in the past because both parties used the machines for all voters.

But Nichols said the county only has enough accessible voting equipment for the Democratic sites and three of the nine Republican precincts. Her attempts to attain more from neighboring counties or by leasing them from the manufacturer have so far been unsuccessful. As of Tuesday, Nichols told Votebeat she was continuing to seek help from the state and the manufacturer in an attempt to comply.

“I’m just trying to help both parties have an election. I don’t want to be in national news because Eastland County didn’t do this right,” Nichols said.

Temi Nichols, the Eastland County elections administrator, looks up the county's voter turnout in her office at the Eastland County Courthouse on Feb. 23, 2026. Nichols has been stressed over the county GOP's decision to hand-count ballots, which has led to logistical issues for the primary election.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment on whether the lack of such equipment would be a violation of the law by the county or the party. The state plans to dispatch election inspectors to Eastland to monitor the election, Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the office, said. The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

For her part, Hayes told Votebeat she’s aware there aren’t enough voting machines to have one available for disabled voters at all of the Republican precincts. When asked if she was concerned about potential legal challenges, she said, “Well, the Lord will have to prevail. It’s not intentional,” and added that voters who need assistance can request it from an election worker or any person the voter chooses.

“This country has too many laws anyway,” she said.

‘We’re going to end up getting blamed’

Eastland County has more than 12,500 registered voters and is around 100 miles west of Fort Worth. As of Tuesday, 651 Republicans and 92 Democrats have already cast primary ballots.

The county is known for honoring and preserving in a tiny coffin the remains of Old Rip, a horned toad that was believed to have been sealed in the cornerstone of the courthouse during its construction in the 1800s and found alive inside the stone 31 years later. Old Rip’s remains are on display in the county courthouse. These days, though, most of the county’s residents get around more than Old Rip.

Many Eastland County residents are commuters who travel to work in nearby cities of Weatherford, Stephenville, and Abilene. David Hullum, the county judge, said he’s concerned that voters could have to travel far out of their way to cast a ballot at their assigned precinct when they’re used to countywide sites. Hullum, a Republican, and Nichols have each made multiple TV and radio appearances and attended local community gatherings to urge voters to vote early to prevent confusion and potential disenfranchisement on Election Day.

Hullum also worries about the costs that additional workers and hours will impose on the county’s taxpayers. For example, during early voting, which the county is responsible for managing, the county is paying for six election judges: three Democrats and three Republicans. In a joint primary, where the parties shared staff, only three workers are needed.

Hayes did not respond to questions about Hullum’s concerns about the added costs. She said there won’t be a shortage of workers to hand count ballots, specifying that she has so far trained around 90 people who will be spread out on Election Day to hand count at each of the nine Republican precincts across the county and at a local county events center, where they’ll tally the ballots cast during early voting. The party will need at least two people to count at each precinct, as well as 26 people, who Hayes says she’s recruited, to count the early ballots.

“I’ve been praying for months,” Hayes said. “Of course I worry, because I won’t be able to be at each location watching, but I’m trusting the Lord. And they’re getting better each time,” she said, speaking about the group she was training on Monday.

Others were less sanguine about possible problems.

Nichols has been stressing over the Republicans’ hand-count plans for weeks. She has watched hours of online training by the Texas Secretary of State’s Office on how to conduct the hand count and what state law requires.

Appointed to the job last summer, this will be the first major election she and her deputy, Donna Fagan, will help the local parties run.

“If this doesn’t work on election night at midnight, am I supposed to step in and save the day? I really don’t know if I can do that,” Nichols said.

Hullum, the county judge, also expressed concern. If there are issues he said, “Everyone is going to look at the county for answers, not the Republican party … We’re going to end up getting blamed for the whole deal.”

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Gillespie County Republicans scale back hand count amid staffing shortage

2026-02-18T22:23:39+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Gillespie County Republicans have scrapped plans to hand count all of their 2026 primary ballots after failing to recruit enough workers — at least for early voting. The lack of manpower prompted party officials to vote last week to use the county’s voting equipment to tabulate thousands of ballots expected to be cast during the two weeks before Election Day on March 3.

However, Gillespie Republicans still plan to hand count ballots cast on Election Day, party officials told Votebeat.

The effort has deepened a divide within the county party: Some members wish to ditch electronic voting equipment entirely and hand count all ballots, while others trust that the county’s electronic voting equipment is safe and the process contains appropriate checks and balances. It’s a continuation of a long-running disagreement that began in 2024, when the county party first hand counted primary ballots.

In 2024, Republicans in Gillespie County spent nearly 24 hours on Election Day hand counting more than 8,000 ballots, deploying over 350 workers they’d spent months training and recruiting. Party officials later found tallying errors in 12 of the county’s 13 precincts, but because Texas law does not require a post-election audit of hand-counted ballots, those results were never formally reviewed for accuracy. The hand counting effort cost more than $40,000 — more than five times the roughly $7,000 spent in 2020, when the party used voting machines. Those expenses are ultimately reimbursed by the state.

Bruce Campbell, the chair of the county Republican Party, told Votebeat that since last week’s vote to use the county’s voting equipment to tabulate early votes, county party officials in charge of recruiting workers to count ballots have kept him in the dark about the number of people who have signed up to work on Election Day. Campbell said he doesn’t know how many will show up.

“They think that I’m going to somehow talk [workers] out of hand counting, which would not benefit me at all,” Campbell, who defended the 2024 hand count, said. “I just want the votes counted, and when it didn’t look like we were going to have enough people, I called a meeting and solved the problem.”

Worker shortages expose rift over machines, hand counting

The last time Campbell was given updated figures was at a party executive committee meeting in January, when the precinct chairs informed him that only about 60 people had signed up for a job that requires closer to 200.

Jim Riley, the county’s election administrator, declined a request for comment. He sent an email to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office late last month to say the local Republican party was receiving “little or no response in recruiting and training hand counters” and that some Republican precinct chairs had begun to “object” to the process of hand counting.

“I know this is a local problem and a Party problem. Yet, the splash back will hurt our elections in Gillespie,” he wrote, asking for guidance on how best to ensure votes were counted.

The Secretary of State’s Office told Votebeat they responded to Riley’s request for guidance via phone call, and declined further comment.

In 2024, the office sent election inspectors to monitor Gillespie County’s hand count, but no post-election audit was conducted because state law does not require audits of ballots counted by hand. This year, one inspector will observe part of early voting and two will be there on Election Day, according to the agency.

Texas law does require a bipartisan post-election audit of machine-counted ballots in a random sampling of precincts. But Gillespie Republicans say they plan to go further, voluntarily hand recounting all ballots cast in the election whether they were initially counted by hand or by machine — a step that would require recruiting many of the same volunteers a second time.

Party officials have not released details about how that recount would work. But unlike in 2024, this year’s ballots were designed to be scanned by a tabulator if needed, allowing results to be verified without organizing another full hand count. It’s unclear if party officials will take that step.

In 2024, the old ballot design meant results could only be counted — and recounted — by hand. Without a scannable paper trail, there was no practical way to independently verify the outcome without organizing another full hand count, so the 2024 results were never formally audited or otherwise checked for accuracy. This year, the ballots can be run through voting machines, a decision Riley told the Secretary of State’s Office he made because he “anticipated the collapse potential” of the hand count.

In the same email to the state, Riley described a chaotic internal debate within the county GOP. During a Zoom call held the day he sent the email, he wrote, party leaders acknowledged the mounting problems but disagreed about how to move forward — and some did not show up at all. “I didn’t expect the childish behavior of these folks,” he writes.

That meeting described in Riley’s email was the precursor for last week’s vote to count the early voting ballots electronically instead. The vote passed 7-3, Campbell said.

In September, Campbell sent the party’s 13 precinct chairs — local elected party officials tasked with staffing polling locations — contact information for all 355 workers who’d counted ballots in 2024. Campbell said the recruitment effort by precinct chairs wasn’t done early enough and there was little interest among hand counters for returning this year.

“People weren’t signing up like they did last time for whatever reason, so if we don’t have enough people, we need to be responsible,” said Campbell.

Lack of responsibility in this context has consequences. Texas law requires that ballots be counted within 24 hours after polls close. If a county’s results are not reported to the state within that window, party officials from that county could face a misdemeanor charge. They could also be subject to lawsuits from candidates contesting the results.

But not everyone in the party shares Campbell’s worries. David Treibs, a Republican precinct chair and vocal opponent of electronic tabulation, opposed the move to count the ballots electronically. He said he hasn’t heard of any candidates on the ballot concerned about the hand count, and told Votebeat he’s not worried about legal fallout if the count isn’t done by the state-mandated deadline.

“Nobody’s gone to jail yet over this,” Treibs said. “I don’t think anybody’s going to sue either, unless they want to make an example out of this.”

He also rejected assertions that the party’s recruitment efforts were unsuccessful.

“We were on track” to have enough workers, he told Votebeat. “I believe strongly that that was not the real issue. They just wanted to flip us back to machines.”

Each of the county’s 13 precincts will need a minimum of three election workers to help supervise the polling location and help check in voters, and a minimum of three additional people to hand count the ballots. The county’s two largest precincts would require between 3-5 teams of people to hand count.

Triebs said he doesn’t know how many workers the party has recruited. His precinct — precinct 13 — is fully staffed. But Triebs said it won’t matter if they don’t get the numbers they’re expecting — they’ll just take longer to count the ballots.

“It’s not like they’re going to shred all the ballots if we’re not done on time. Of course not. That’s ridiculous. That’s not going to happen, “ Treibs said. “The ballots will be counted, so that’s not the issue.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Dallas and Williamson counties switch to precinct-level voting for primary election day

2026-01-09T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

In an about-face, Dallas County Republicans last week decided against hand-counting ballots in Texas’ March primary, saying they weren’t able to line up enough workers, among other hurdles.

That leaves just two counties where Republicans will hand-count their primary ballots: Gillespie County, west of Austin, and Eastland County, southwest of Fort Worth.

But Republicans in Dallas and Williamson counties are planning another major change for the March 3 primary election that will also require more election workers, and will affect how voters cast their ballots: They intend to eliminate the use of countywide voting sites on Election Day.

That means voters in these counties — Republicans and Democrats — would be required to cast ballots at assigned neighborhood polling places instead of at more centralized polling locations that can accommodate any voter from anywhere in the county.

Under state law, the parties have wide authority to decide how to run their primaries, but they must agree on whether to use countywide voting. If the Republicans don’t want to offer it, Democrats can’t offer it either.

Michelle Evans, the chair of the Williamson County GOP, said that having voters cast ballots at their assigned polling location brings “a higher level of confidence that the people that are coming in are people that are registered voters in that area, because that is their community.”

Democrats in those counties say they’re struggling to find enough locations to support neighborhood-level voting. “We don’t even have all the locations locked down,” said Kim Gilby, the Democratic Party chair in Williamson County. “To me, this is going to be a nightmare.”

Democrats also worry the change will confuse voters from both parties who have for years been used to countywide sites on Election Day. The move, they say, could potentially disenfranchise voters who go to the wrong location and aren’t able to cast a ballot.

In response to questions, Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West said all voters receive registration cards that list their precinct. “I would hate to believe that we have devolved to a point where we feel the voting electorate is too incompetent to read their own voter registration card,” West told Votebeat in a text message.

Here’s why the shift is happening, and what you need to know:

Who decides where voters can cast ballots on Election Day during a primary election?

Under state law, for Election Day voting, it’s up to political parties to determine whether voters should cast ballots at their assigned neighborhood precinct or at a countywide vote center.

This applies only to primaries. For general elections (which include any election called by the governor), that decision is made at the county level by the county commissioners’ courts.

What about early voting during a primary election?

County officials, not the political parties, manage the two weeks of early voting. Under state law, during early voting, voters can cast ballots in person at any polling location available in their county.

Can’t Democrats split with Republicans and stick with countywide vote centers on Election Day?

No. In order for a county to offer countywide polling places in the primary election, under Texas law, both parties must agree to use them. So the Republicans’ decision to use assigned polling locations in some counties requires Democrats in those counties to do the same, even if the party prefers countywide polling sites.

Why do Republicans favor assigned neighborhood voting sites over countywide voting?

Republican critics of countywide voting claim it makes elections less secure because it could allow people “to double or triple vote,” though there’s no evidence that this can happen. Texas election officials have procedures in place to prevent double voting, including the use of voting equipment that helps officials know in real time who has voted and where.

Some Republicans also say countywide voting makes it easier to pierce ballot secrecy by allowing the public to piece together different pieces of data from public records to figure out what choices certain people made on their ballots.

Votebeat and the Texas Tribune last year reported that it was possible, in limited instances, to link some ballots to the voters who cast them, but the problem wasn’t just tied to voters using countywide voting sites and eliminating it doesn’t fix risks to ballot secrecy. The problem with linking ballots stems from Texas’ push to make almost all election records public, which allowed researchers, in some cases, to cross-reference different public records and find a specific voter’s ballot image.

Republican lawmakers have proposed eliminating the use of countywide voting across the state.

What are Democrats’ concerns with assigned neighborhood-level polling locations?

Using assigned precincts requires, in some cases, twice as many polling locations as countywide voting. Each polling place has to be staffed with workers and furnished with materials and equipment. Texas law requires each polling location to have a minimum of three election workers, who must be paid at least $12 per hour.

Party and county officials say it’s difficult to find enough election workers and enough polling locations that comply with security and accessibility requirements.

Although some public buildings are free to use, they’re not always available, which requires leasing of spaces, at an additional cost.

The countywide polling place program eased some of those costs by allowing officials to use fewer, and more centralized locations, while offering voters flexibility on where to cast ballots.

Democrats are also worried that voters who show up at the wrong polling location on Election Day may be turned away without casting a ballot. Although a voter can ask to cast a provisional ballot if their name is not on the precinct’s voter list, if it’s found to have been cast at the wrong voting location, it won’t ultimately be tallied.

Who pays for the primary elections in Texas?

The costs of primary elections are covered mostly by taxpayers, as well as candidate filing fees.

Political parties in each county have funds generated from local candidate filing fees, fundraisers, and donations that they can use to pay for primary elections and their own administrative costs. The costs for the primary are then reimbursed by the state.

The Texas Legislature allocated about $21 million for the 2026 primary, and the state expects an additional $5 million from candidate filing fees. However, those funds also help cover expenses such as postage for voter registration, operational costs at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, and other administrative costs.

How can voters in Dallas County and Williamson County find out their assigned polling location?

Every registered voter should receive their voter registration card this month from the county elections office. That card has voters’ precinct information.

Voters can also visit their county’s elections website or reach out to their voter registrar to find their assigned precinct.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Dallas County Republicans abandon plan to hand-count ballots in March primary

2025-12-30T22:22:13+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

After months of laying the groundwork to hand-count thousands of ballots in the March 3 primary, the Dallas County Republican Party announced on Tuesday it has decided not to do so, opting instead to contract with the county elections department to administer the election using voting equipment.

The decision spares the party the pressure it likely would have faced if a hand-count had delayed results beyond the state’s 24-hour reporting requirements in the state’s closely watched GOP primary for U.S. Senate, among other offices.

In a statement posted on social media, Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West said he decided to work with the county to “conduct a precinct-based, community, separate Election Day electoral process.” The move, he said, “reduces the liabilities” of the party. “In this case, discretion is the better part of valor.”

The decision reverses months of statements suggesting the party was seriously preparing to count tens of thousands of Election Day ballots by hand — a move that would have affected all Dallas County voters, regardless of party.

Under Texas law, if one party hand-counts ballots, both parties must abandon countywide Election Day voting at vote centers and require voters to cast ballots at assigned neighborhood precincts. Democrats had planned to use voting equipment to tabulate their results, but would have been forced into precinct-only voting if Republicans proceeded with a hand count. It’s unclear if the GOP’s intention to use precinct-based voting would lock Democrats into the same arrangement; the Dallas County Elections Department has not responded to requests for more information.

Republicans in Dallas County and elsewhere have pushed in recent years to count ballots by hand as President Donald Trump and others have decreased trust in voting machines by spreading unfounded claims about their reliability. However, election officials and voting experts have repeatedly warned that hand-counting ballots at scale is costly, labor-intensive, slower to produce results and more prone to human error than machine tabulation. State law also does not require audits of hand-counted ballots and severely limits public observation of the counting process.

In early December, West said the party had raised more than $400,000 toward a hand-count effort and recruited more than 1,000 workers. But there were still unresolved concerns about staffing, training, security, facilities, and funding, particularly as the Texas Secretary of State’s Office warned counties it may not have enough money to reimburse unusually high primary costs if many jurisdictions choose to hand-count.

Hand-counting would also have required significantly more polling locations and workers than recent primaries. In elections that are hand-counted, Texas law requires ballots to be cast and counted at assigned precincts, and in all elections, the law mandates that counting continue without interruption once polls close. Election workers must be paid at least $12 an hour, and large hand counts can stretch late into the night or beyond.

In an interview on Tuesday, West said the party would need at least 3,000 hand-counters but had recruited fewer than half that number. “We cannot take that risk of not being able to have the appropriate amount of counters because it would put our election judges in an untenable legal position,” he said. “We’ve got 63 days to go — early voting will start the 16th of February.”

Under Texas law, political parties control how ballots are counted in primaries but must report results within 24 hours after polls close. Party chairs have been warned that court orders could be required if hand-counts delay reporting.

By contracting with the county, Dallas County Republicans would avoid those logistical hurdles and allow both parties to continue using voting equipment and established election procedures. According to West, the Dallas County GOP is currently working on a contract with the county and expects it to be signed on Wednesday.

Managing Editor Nathaniel Rakich contributed reporting.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Dallas County Republicans’ plan to hand-count primary ballots moves forward

2025-12-09T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Dallas County Republicans say they’re planning to go ahead with hand-counting tens of thousands of Election Day ballots cast in the upcoming March 3 primary after raising more than $400,000 towards the effort.

The county GOP party also said more than 1,000 people have signed up to count the ballots in an effort that would make the county the largest jurisdiction in the country to hand-count results on Election Day. Other large jurisdictions in the country have hand-counted ballots, but they’ve done so after an election and to verify the accuracy of machine counts, including as part of an audit.

“Not only are the eyes of Texas upon us, but the eyes of America,” said Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West, a former congressman, in a social media statement Friday. West said the effort is meant to “restore confidence in our electoral process.”

That decision means all Dallas County voters will have to cast ballots at their assigned precinct rather than at countywide vote centers on Election Day. By law, if one party wants to use precinct-based voting, then the other must do the same. And by law, any hand-count of ballots has to be done at each of the county’s polling locations. During the 12-day early voting period, voters will still be able to cast ballots anywhere in the county.

In Texas, political parties have the authority to decide how they’ll administer primary elections and how they want to count ballots on Election Day. State law requires the party to report election results within 24 hours after polls close. Failure to do so could result in a misdemeanor charge.

The Republican primary ballot in 2026 will include a hotly contested and closely watched U.S. Senate primary for the seat currently held by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.

The Republican party has yet to sign a contract with the Dallas County Elections Department locking in the plan, something West said he now plans to do this week.

Voters in the Democratic primary will still use voting equipment to cast their ballots. But Dallas County Democratic Party Chairman Kardal Coleman said the requirement to vote in precincts rather than countywide vote centers means the party will now need to secure more than the usual 450 locations for Election Day and the additional workers to staff them.

“Not just for Democratic voters, but this is going to adversely affect every voter who may show up in the wrong location,” Coleman said. “It’s already causing chaos and confusion.”

The county Republican party also must secure a minimum of 360 polling locations with the required space needed to conduct the hand count — fewer than the Democrats because Republicans are the minority party in Dallas County. The GOP will have to find enough money for all needed supplies, including everything from ballot boxes to printing tally sheets to the tables and chairs needed for counting. It isn’t clear how much of that has been done.

In a brief text message Monday, West clarified the party does not plan to hand-count absentee ballots or ballots cast early in person — only Election Day ballots.

According to a 2024 primary election final cost report Votebeat obtained from the Texas Secretary of State Office through a public records request, Dallas County Republicans employed more than 1,400 workers on Election Day at a cost of more than $248,000. Polling place rental fees cost nearly $50,000. Those costs are certain to increase, because hand-counting requires more people to count and additional locations.

Limited transparency with a hand count

In September, Dallas County Republicans voted to hand-count the primary ballots if they could raise enough money and recruit enough workers. A similar effort by the party in 2023 was shut down after the party failed to raise the expected $1 million it would need.

In 2024, the Dallas County parties conducted a joint primary. Voters were able to cast ballots anywhere in the county because both parties agreed to use the state-approved countywide polling place program. The program is aimed at reducing the costs of conducting an election for counties and easing voter confusion.

The method of hand counting has proven to be inaccurate and costly. In Texas, hand-counting has fewer transparency requirements than other methods.

The only people permitted in the area where the hand count is happening are precinct judges, who are in charge of supervising the polling locations, the election clerks counting ballots, and poll watchers appointed by candidates or political action committees.

And unless a candidate requests a recount or the party decides to do so, no provision in state law requires a recount or an audit of hand-counted election results to check for accuracy.

When Republicans in Gillespie County hand-counted more than 8,000 ballots during the March 2024 primary, the party days later found they’d made errors in the tally of 12 out of 13 precincts’ totals.

And they spent more than double of the costs of the 2020 primary, public records show.

Taxpayers foot some of those costs. After the primary, the state reimburses local parties for some of their primary election expenses, including administrative costs, election worker hourly rates, and election supplies. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has already warned party officials that it won’t cover higher-than-normal costs for the primary compared with previous years.

According to the 2024 primary final cost report, Republicans in Gillespie paid more than $40,000 for 355 workers who spent nearly 24 hours counting. In the 2020 primary, when the party used the county’s voting equipment to tabulate results, the party employed 45 workers at a cost of nearly $7,000. Gillespie County Republicans plan to hand-count ballots again in 2026.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Dallas County Republicans want to hand-count ballots next year. What would that mean?

2025-10-10T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Republicans in Dallas County, one of Texas’ largest voting jurisdictions, say they want to count ballots in their coming March primary by hand, if they can afford to, a change that could delay the reporting of election results and have far-reaching consequences for all of the county’s 1.5 million voters.

The decision could force Dallas Democrats, as well as Republicans, to return to casting ballots at their assigned local precincts, rather than countywide vote centers, which would require finding scores of additional polling locations and hundreds more workers. It could also vastly increase the cost of holding both primaries, an increase that the parties would have to be prepared to cover on their own.

Cost is one reason why Dallas County Republicans decided in 2023 against hand-counting ballots. At the time, Jennifer Stoddard Hajdu, then the county GOP chair, estimated the party would need more than $1 million to hand-count the more than 70,000 ballots cast in the 2024 primary.

Two years later, Hajdu is still skeptical. “I just think there are so many parts to this that it’s going to be very difficult to get it done,” she said.

But Allen West, a former Florida congressman and Army veteran who is the new chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party, said that the size of the challenge shouldn’t deter the party. He said that party members distrust electronic voting equipment, and that the county’s problems with some of its electronic pollbooks last year contributed to the renewed push to hand-count ballots.

The Dallas County Republican Party’s executive committee voted in September to hand-count primary ballots, and set a goal to raise $500,000 to get it done, West said.

“Let’s not forget this is the way it used to be done,” West said, referring to hand-counts and precinct-based voting. In the Army, he said, “we don’t take that excuse of anything being too hard.”

Other counties consider hand-counting ballots

Calls for hand-counting ballots have grown in recent years amid skepticism and misinformation campaigns about machines used for voting and tabulating ballots. But experts agree and studies show the method is time-consuming, costly, less accurate, and less secure than using machines.

In Gillespie County, in the Hill Country about 80 miles west of Austin, Republicans spent months training hundreds of workers to hand-count ballots in 2024. Republicans also designed ballots that couldn’t be tabulated by machines, and paid the printing costs.

On Election Day that year, 350 workers spent nearly 24 hours counting more than 8,000 ballots. In 12 out of 13 precincts, the party found errors in their tallies. And since state law does not require a post-election audit of ballots that are counted by hand, those results have yet to be checked for accuracy.

Even so, Gillespie County Republicans are planning to hand-count their primary ballots in 2026.

In Austin, Travis County Republicans hand-counted 2,000 mail-in ballots in 2024, which was a fraction of the total ballots cast. The group reported discrepancies in its own count that had to be corrected. Officials there told Votebeat that they have yet to decide if they’ll do so again in 2026.

In Williamson County, north of Austin, Republicans considered hand-counting for the 2026 primary, but have now decided against it. The county is home to about 450,000 registered voters.

“Once the logistics started to get fleshed out a little bit more, that’s when reality hit,” said Michelle Evans, the Williamson County Republican Party chair. Evans said requirements in state law mean it’s difficult to do a hand-count “without an extreme amount of manpower and a budget that we may not be able to fulfill.”

How much more would a hand-count cost?

It’s up to county parties to decide how their primaries will be administered. But by law, in order to use countywide vote centers for the primary, both parties have to agree on it. If one party wants to use precinct-based voting, then the other must do the same.

And by law, any hand-count of ballots has to be done at each of the county’s polling locations.

Dallas County Republicans have shared polling locations and election workers with Democrats for the past two primaries, but aren’t planning to do so next year. According to the Dallas County Elections Department, neither party has signed a contract agreeing to either a joint or split primary or specified the voting method they’ll use. Dallas County Democratic Chair Kardal Coleman said Democrats are still considering their options.

West said his party estimates it’ll need to secure at least 360 polling locations to manage a hand-count. That means the party would have to recruit and train at least 2,160 workers — at least three to manage each polling site and at least three more to hand-count ballots at each site.

The cost for election workers alone at the Republican polling sites would amount to more than $300,000. That includes workers’ $12-per-hour wage for a 12-hour shift on Election Day, plus 12 hours of pay for the teams counting up the votes on ballots that are expected to have more than two dozen races on them. Any time beyond that would cost even more.

That dollar figure doesn’t include the cost of materials, including ballot boxes, voting booths, paper and ballot printing costs.

At that rate, the cost of hand-counting the GOP primary ballots would likely outstrip the $500,000 the party says it can afford to spend.

State may not absorb the added costs

The state, which reimburses local parties for some of their primary election expenses, has already warned county party chairs that it won’t absorb higher-than-normal costs for the primary compared with previous years, even if there’s a switch from a joint primary to separate party primaries. That means county parties that decide to hand-count would have to prepare to cover these extraordinary costs out of their own pockets.

The Legislature allocated about $21 million in funding for the 2026 primary, and the state expects an additional $5 million from candidate filing fees. However, those funds also help cover expenses such as postage for voter registration, operational costs at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, and other administrative costs.

Texas Secretary of State officials have also warned county chairs that by law, election results have to be in within 24 hours after the polls close. Failing to do so could result in a misdemeanor charge.

West defended his party’s vote for hand-counting as an effort to “return to a system of voting that was the successful standard for decades.”

Dallas County has actually used some kind of machines for voting and vote counting for most of the past century, starting with mechanical lever machines in the 1930s and later punch cards and optical scan machines, said Bruce Sherbet, who served as the county’s election administrator from 1987 to 2011. He said it’s possible smaller jurisdictions such as cities and school districts may have hand-counted their ballots, but he couldn’t immediately identify any. Today’s voting machines tabulate votes electronically but use paper ballots for auditing purposes, and tabulating equipment is tested prior to and after an election for accuracy.

Reversing course by hand-counting, “is just completely irresponsible,” said Coleman, the Democratic Party chair. “I would hate to see the Republican Party do something that would ultimately harm voters, confuse the electorate, and change our process, which has shown and proven that it works for every voter in our county,” he said.

What the state is telling proponents of hand-counting

Paul Adams, the newly appointed Dallas County elections administrator, said the department’s goal will be to respect the parties’ legal right to determine how to run their primaries, and also make sure “that the voters are being protected and the voters are going to be getting the best possible service.”

Although there’s no explicit deadline for the parties to reach an agreement with the county, or decide whether they’ll run their primaries together or separately, there are deadlines looming.

Months before the March primary, the parties have to secure polling locations and sign any lease agreements for them. They have to hire and train election workers, design ballots, test equipment, and complete other administrative duties by January, when voters can start applying for a mail-in ballot.

At a gathering of hundreds of local party chairs in Austin last month, Christina Adkins, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office elections division director, reminded party chairs who might be skeptical of machine counts that hand-counting is already part of the election process.

To verify the accuracy of machine counts after every election, a bipartisan group of officials hand-count a sample of ballots — from 1% of precincts, or three precincts, whichever is greater — with races selected at random by the state. The process has been legally required for years.

If party chairs like the idea of a hand-count but find that it isn’t feasible, Adkins suggested that they consider getting involved in these post-election hand-count audits, which poll watchers are now allowed to attend. The results of the audit must also be posted on the county’s website.

“It is a way to get your community involved. It’s a way to validate the accuracy of your vote totals,” Adkins said. “I strongly encourage you all in this room as leaders in your community to participate in this.”

Evans, the Williamson County Republican chair, said party members in her county are opting for that route.

“The stakes are really high,” Evans said. “If we were to upend everything, go back to hand-marked paper ballots, a full hand-count, precinct-level, and the primary is complete chaos, then everyone is going to be left with the impression that none of this can be done.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She’s based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Arizona’s Cochise County, known for election turmoil, may challenge state laws again ahead of 2026

2025-09-04T09:00:00+00:00

When the Cochise County supervisors sat down to talk about elections in August, they were well aware of what happened the last time the county’s leaders tried to test the limits of state law.

The rural Arizona county on the Mexican border is where, during the 2022 midterm election, two Republicans on the Board of Supervisors devised a plan to ditch the machines used for elections and instead hand-count votes, before a judge foiled their plan. They then delayed the vote to finalize the county’s results until the same judge ordered them to certify them.

Supervisor Tom Crosby, who was re-elected last year, is awaiting a criminal trial on charges related to his actions during that election. And the county’s two new supervisors, also both Republicans, know his story well, and have been warned by the secretary of state about the election rules they must follow.

Nonetheless, at an Aug. 5 meeting, Supervisor Frank Antenori said the board needs to test the state’s laws once again, to see if supervisors really are obligated to use machines to tally votes, and whether they really have a non-discretionary duty to certify results. And Supervisor Kathleen Gomez said that if she had been in office in 2024, she wouldn’t have certified the county’s election results because of problems that occurred while counting ballots.

“I think we have to put this back in play in the courts,” Antenori said about supervisors’ duty to certify elections. “We have to make a case to go fight this again, or get the Legislature to change the statute.”

With another midterm election nearing, the supervisors are all but vowing to test the boundaries of state election laws that are meant to ensure accurate, secure, and timely election results. Hand-counting ballots has been proven in multiple studies and trials to be less accurate and take more time. And certification deadlines, if breached, could disrupt the transfer of power at all levels of government, from local to federal offices.

The false claims of election fraud have slowed in Arizona since Donald Trump won the presidential election last year, but the conversation among the supervisors last month, and several others earlier this year, are an indication of how Trump’s prior claims continue to influence how Arizona’s elections are perceived and run, and how they could lead to future challenges to results in 2026 and beyond.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, was invited to present at the supervisors’ August meeting, but didn’t go after seeing he was being asked to present alongside someone who had encouraged the supervisors in 2022 to block the certification of the midterm results, according to documents obtained by Votebeat through a public records request.

After the meeting, his communications director, Aaron Thacker, told Votebeat that there is no debate about what the law requires the supervisors to do. And he said that the repeated attempts to question certified election systems in Arizona, particularly in smaller counties, “do more to undermine public confidence than to address any real issue.”

Hearing 2022 claims repeated at supervisors meeting

The goal of the August meeting, Antenori wrote in his invitation to Fontes, was to “ensure transparency, build voter confidence, and evaluate the proper processes for verifying machine integrity.”

The other invited speaker was Paul Rice, a Phoenix resident with no formal experience in elections but who was previously involved in a court case challenging the state’s use of the machines that tally votes, including ballot-marking devices and tabulators. Rice has been lobbying Cochise supervisors to get rid of the machines since 2022.

His major claim is that the laboratories that certified the state’s voting systems in the leadup to the 2022 election were not properly accredited. That claim is part of what Crosby and former Supervisor Peggy Judd said prompted their hesitation over certification.

At the time, then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sent the supervisors an explanation from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission about how the labs were properly accredited. But supervisors still delayed their vote, demanding to hear from Rice and Hobbs in person. That never happened, and the judge forced them to certify before the state’s deadline.

Rice accepted the invitation to the August meeting and talked for about 45 minutes, without other public comment allowed or any rebuttal from the County Attorney’s Office. He repeated his claim about the lab accreditation, and said he didn’t believe the county had to use the machines. He also said the law on certification wasn’t clear.

Rice repeated an argument that Crosby has attempted to make in his criminal case: that state law mandates that supervisors “canvass” results, but does mandate that they “certify” them. He said he believes canvassing just means reviewing the vote totals — not signing off on them.

Thacker, Fontes’ spokesman, disputed Rice’s claims in a response to Votebeat. He pointed to a sentence in state law that says electronic tabulation equipment must be used to count ballots. And he said that courts have made it clear that the only authorized hand count under state law is a post-election audit, which examines votes cast on a limited number of ballots.

On canvassing vs. certifying, Thacker said Rice’s claim is semantic and there is no legitimate debate about it.

“In Arizona law, the canvass is the process by which the election results are reviewed and officially confirmed — it is the act of certification,” Thacker wrote in an email.

Ali Morse, a Cochise County resident who helped lead a response in opposition to the supervisors’ 2022 actions, said she experienced déjà vu watching Rice’s presentation.

“The Board’s work session, in fact, appeared to be an attempt to amplify Supervisor Crosby’s dubious justification for unlawfully refusing to certify/canvass our 2022 general election which catapulted Crosby into his current mess of legal and financial problems,” Morse wrote in a letter to the editor published in a local paper, The Herald Review.

Jenny Guzman, program director of Common Cause Arizona said the misinformation given at the meeting is dangerous.

“It’s really important for people in government, especially county supervisors and people in other elected offices, to really remember that sometimes they are the only line of communication to voters,” Guzman said. “They need to make sure they aren’t providing any sort of information that isn’t accurate.”

New supervisors preparing to hand count ballots

The conversation was the latest in a long string of attempts by the new supervisors to signal to constituents who are concerned about election integrity that they are listening.

In a February conversation about elections, the supervisors said they eventually want to get to a place where they can hand count ballots. That means first going back to precinct-style voting, where voters can vote only in their precinct, rather than anywhere in the county, they said.

And Antenori said that he would like to make the plan ahead of an election, so that supervisors can get the legal battle with the state out of the way beforehand. Otherwise, he said, “I think we are fighting with two feet in the grave.”

After that discussion, Fontes sent the supervisors a letter warning them against it, saying the only hand count allowed is the statutorily prescribed review of ballots, which specifies how many ballots should be reviewed. “Manual tabulation of ballots outside of this prescribed sample audit, whether in addition to, or in lieu of using electronic tabulation equipment, raises many logistical as well as legal concerns,” he wrote.

But again in April, even as supervisors voted 2-1 to spend $308,000 on two new high-speed tabulation machines, they said they eventually want to get rid of them. At that meeting, Antenori repeated his desire to test the law on ballot tabulation, in civil court, before an election.

Gomez said at the time that she would like to get rid of machines to count votes, but she believes state law requires the county to use them. She said the same thing in a recent interview with Votebeat. Also, machine malfunctions during the 2024 elections, which didn’t affect the results but did slow down the counting process considerably, concerned her, she said, and she would have had trouble certifying that election.

At the April meeting, she asked the public to have patience while the supervisors figured it out. If they proceed now with the law as it is, she said, “they will come after us and they will put us in jail the minute we say we have no machines.”

It was one of many allusions supervisors made to the charges against Crosby, who has pleaded not guilty to interference with an election officer and conspiracy. As he awaits trial, Crosby has demanded the county cover about $300,000 in legal fees.

The supervisors had attempted to pass that claim on to the insurance pool that represents county governments in the state. But the pool denied that claim last month. A pool attorney said in an Aug. 11 letter that its agreement with the county excludes coverage of claims arising out of any “dishonest, fraudulent, criminal, malicious, deliberate or intended WRONGFUL ACT.”

The pool also reserves the right to deny a claim when “it does not involve accidental and fortuitous circumstances,” the lawyer wrote.

Last week, the supervisors met in private to discuss what to do now.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

GOP-backed bill would help verify the results of hand-counted ballots in Texas

2025-04-09T22:01:53+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

A year after Gillespie County Republicans hand-counted thousands of primary ballots, a bill from a Republican Texas lawmaker whose district includes parts of the area could make it easier to verify the accuracy of hand-counted election results.

State Rep. Ellen Troxclair of Lakeway filed House Bill 3113, which would require counties opting for hand-counts to use a ballot that is capable of being scanned and tabulated by voting machines using optical scanning technology.

By law, Gillespie County Republicans were allowed to design their own ballots, and they didn’t choose to use ballots that could be scanned. That meant their primary results could only be verified manually.

If passed, the bill would allow for a faster recount or audit of any hand-counted results. Hand-counts can take days and involve hundreds of people. Studies have shown the method is time-consuming, costly, and less accurate than using machines.

“It will improve accuracy so that we can have greater confidence in the outcome,” Troxclair said.

The bill does not prevent a hand-count or require an audit, she said, but simply makes a faster recount of hand-counted ballots an option.

Last year, Republicans in Gillespie County, home to Fredericksburg, west of Austin, hand-counted every ballot cast in their primary. There were about 8,000 ballots, each of which contained choices for more than 30 races, including Troxclair’s. Days later, during the canvass, Votebeat reported that election officials found errors in the results of all but one of the county’s 13 precincts.

Troxclair said Votebeat’s reporting on Gillespie’s hand-count helped her understand where the process “could improve to ensure accuracy,” leading her to propose legislation. The bill was discussed during a House Elections Committee hearing Wednesday and is awaiting a committee vote.

Texas requires partial recounts only for ballots that are tabulated electronically. There is no provision in state law to require a recount or audit for the results of a hand-count. The Texas secretary of state’s election division does not have the authority to audit the election unless Gillespie is one of the counties the office randomly selects.

Public records showed the effort in Gillespie was costly for taxpayers. It required 350 people, who worked more than 2,300 hours on Election Day at $12 per hour, totaling more than $27,000 in wages. The amount did not include hourly wages for election clerks at each of the county’s 13 precincts on Election Day who checked in voters and performed duties other than counting.

Jim Riley, the Gillespie County elections administrator, testified in favor of the bill Wednesday.

Riley told lawmakers that there’s no way to know exactly how many errors and inaccuracies were made in the primary because the ballots could not be scanned and recounted.

“Unreadable penmanship, simple math errors, transposing numerals, all of those things made a difference in whether or not we were accurate,” Riley told lawmakers.

Those opposing the bill, including members of the Fredericksburg Tea Party who led the hand-count in Gillespie, said it would create additional costs for counties who choose to hand-count because voting equipment vendors would have to be paid to program the machines to handle the ballots.

“Why should counties who choose to hand-count like us, or who are considering returning to hand-count, be forced to contract with the very machine companies they’re trying to separate from?” said Jeannette Hormuth, a Fredericksburg Tea Party member who helped organize last year’s hand-count.

Christina Adkins, elections division director at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said that under federal and state law, counties must provide at least one accessible voting machine for voters with disabilities at each polling location, whether counties hand-count or not. That means counties already are required to have the capabilities to format ballots so they can be scanned.

Riley said the bill would not create additional burdens on the county. In fact, last year, his office offered to format the primary ballots so they could be scanned. The decision was up to the county GOP.

“We said they could hand-count the complete election at their leisure after it was over, but that was turned down,” he said.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Trump wants to ‘go back to paper ballots.’ Most of America already uses them.

2025-03-17T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

President Donald Trump recently repeated his calls for exclusively using paper ballots, lauding them before the first cabinet meeting of his second term. For the sake of honest elections, he said, “We have to go back to paper ballots.”

In reality, the overwhelming majority of the country already uses paper ballots.

Most states use one of two methods: either voters hand-mark a paper ballot that is then read by a machine, or they use a ballot-marking device that prints a summary of their choices on a sheet of paper for verification before it’s fed into a tabulator.

Both are examples of a voter-verified paper trail, a system that blends paper ballots with machine verification and tabulation for accessibility, efficiency, and security.

Election security experts overwhelmingly consider this the gold standard because it ensures that voters can check their selections before casting their ballot, and it creates a physical record that can be used for an audit or recount later if needed.

Using paper ballots, in other words, does not necessarily mean eliminating the use of electronic voting equipment and hand-counting election results. It means doing things the way they are normally done, and ensuring that there’s a paper trail to check for errors.

Estimates vary, but according to Verified Voting more than 95% of U.S. voters already cast their ballots on paper. Before the November presidential election, the Brennan Center for Justice estimated that around 98% of votes cast in that election would be cast on paper, more than four years ago.

The only state that does not use paper ballots statewide? Louisiana — a Republican stronghold that has consistently supported Trump in past elections.

Meanwhile, a handful of counties in states like Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Indiana still use electronic voting machines that lack a voter-verified paper trail. These counties tend to be rural and lack the funds to replace their voting systems. Trump has not proposed any federal funding to support such a transition, leaving these localities without a clear path to comply with his vision.

So what does Trump mean by his call to “go back” to paper ballots? And how far back into the paper era does he really want to go?

Some of his allies appear to believe he means getting rid of all electronic equipment used to mark or count ballots, and that’s what they’re pushing for.

“We will not stop until we have paper ballots counted, and we’re going to melt down all the voting machines and turn them into prison bars,” MyPillow CEO and ardent Trump backer Mike Lindell told ABC News after he was held in contempt of court this month while fighting a defamation case over his false claims about Smartmatic voting machines.

This month, a Georgia state senator proposed a bill that would eliminate voting machines entirely, requiring that ballots be both hand-marked and hand-counted.

“I know many of you listen to everything that President Trump says, and you may have noticed a week or two ago, President Trump asked for paper ballots,” Republican Colton Moore told fellow senators, “and I have a piece of legislation that accomplishes that very thing.

Lindell’s pledge and Moore’s legislation highlight the risks of misunderstanding the system we currently have, or interpreting Trump’s wishes for paper ballots so literally as to mean eliminating scanners entirely in favor of hand counting. I won’t dive into the details here, but Votebeat has repeatedly reported on why hand counting is inefficient, not secure, inaccurate, and extremely costly. It’s fair to wonder whether anyone who advocates such a switch is more interested in creating suspicion about our election system than in improving it.

What a real advocate for election integrity wants is a way for voters to be sure that they are casting the votes they intend to cast, and for election officials to be able to verify that those votes were correctly counted. Those goals are already achieved through the vast majority of existing systems.

There can be political debates about ballot access, election funding, and the infrastructure needed to support secure and efficient voting.

But before we go melting down our voting machines, it’s important to ground this discussion about how we vote in facts. Paper ballots are not a partisan issue. They are a standard election security measure that the country has largely adopted.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

In Brazos County, Texas, election officials feel the strain of unrelenting scrutiny from right-wing skeptics

2024-11-15T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

BRYAN, Texas — At election time, Trudy Hancock spends a lot of time in her car, delivering equipment to polling sites scattered around Brazos County and visiting poll workers who need her help in the field.

She keeps the car radio on, and always tuned to Christian music.

Recovering from a tiring Election Day last week, the longtime county election administrator recalled hearing one song that resonated with her. It’s called “The Truth,” and opens with the lyrics:

How many times can you hear the same lie

Before you start to believe it?

At her desk that morning, she recited a version of those lyrics as best as she could remember them, softly, haltingly.

“But I know the truth,” she added, as she tried to hold back tears. “It gets hard.”

There are reasons why the song hit home. After decades of working in elections, and years of hearing people lie about them, Hancock and her staff members are starting to sometimes doubt themselves. Like election officials around the country, they’ve repeatedly tried to reassure a small group of right-wing skeptics that the county’s elections are safe and secure. They’ve tried to answer their questions, accommodated their demands, educated them about the law, and offered them opportunities to see firsthand how the process works.

“They won’t accept our answers, because it’s not the answers that they want,” Hancock, 60, said. “There’s just no end to it.”

People wait in line to vote at Brazos County Elections Administration Office in Bryan, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2024. Activist groups say they speak for voters who lack confidence in the process. Most voters Votebeat spoke with on Election Day didn’t express such doubts.

Election Day in Brazos — a Republican stronghold around 100 miles northwest of Houston, and home to Texas A&M University — went pretty smoothly this time. Minor technical issues were resolved early on. Few locations had long wait times.

Hancock knows the truth. But she also knows that it won’t be enough to quiet the skeptics, who were questioning election processes right up to the start of early voting this year, and haven’t stopped.

Now that the 2024 election is over, Hancock is about to decide whether she can keep doing the job.

The requests keep coming

Since January, Hancock and her staff have hosted at least three public meetings where they’ve gone over, in detail, how the voting equipment works, and every single step of the election process. They’ve explained to the group of concerned residents that voter roll maintenance is done daily by staff members whose sole job is to make sure such lists are accurate.

Following the March primary election, Hancock invited some residents who have been coming to Commissioners Court to take part in the state-mandated partial hand count, which is done by every county after each election to check the accuracy of the voting equipment. The Secretary of State’s office selects the races to be hand-counted.

In an effort to increase transparency, Hancock got state permission to hand-count additional races. One of the critics of her office, resident Catherine Viens, participated in the count, which took a few days to complete and showed no discrepancies.

This is the new normal, and that scares me. The distrust in our process and our people. The distrust in everything.”
Trudy Hancock, Brazos County elections administrator

But the requests kept coming. They asked Hancock to guard against double voting — though there’s no evidence of that happening at large scale — by purchasing special ballot paper that’s preprinted with sequential serial numbers, starting with 1.

The paper cost taxpayers $14,000 and, according to Hancock, doesn’t really improve security. It creates waste, because leftover ballots can’t be reused in the next election. On top of that, the county workers have to spend more time and resources redacting the printed numbers to protect voters’ ballot secrecy.

Trudy Hancock, Brazos County elections administrator, at the Brazos Center on Election Day. Her first experience in elections was as a poll worker in her community back in the late 1980s.

Hancock agreed to it anyway for the presidential election. But it didn’t seem to bring anyone peace of mind.

During a state-mandated logic and accuracy test of the electronic equipment, which is open to the public, the group repeatedly asked, “Are the machines connected to the internet?” And each time the answer was the same, “no,” said Thomas Cavaness, the Brazos County Democratic Party chair, who participated in the test.

The testing should have taken 45 minutes to an hour, Cavaness said, “but instead it took us three hours to finish, because they kept asking questions.”

False claims fly at an October meeting

The questions have been pouring in for at least a year now, from several Republicans in Brazos who speak out regularly at Commissioners Court meetings. They’ve urged elected officials to take steps that include eliminating the use of electronic voting equipment like ballot-marking machines and electronic poll books. They have falsely claimed the equipment is connected to the internet and vulnerable to hacking.

At an October meeting, days before the start of early voting, four people spoke, asking commissioners again to endorse their efforts. Brazos resident Cynthia Wiley expressed her frustration with what she said was a lack of action.

“You’re our only recourse to express our concerns,” Wiley told the commissioners, citing voter registrations she’s unsuccessfully challenged. “And you guys have direct authority over the election administrator.”

Hancock has said her office is following the legally mandated procedures. Federal law prevents election officials from systematically removing people from the voter rolls 90 days ahead of a federal election. In addition, state law requires election officials to notify voters and give them a chance to respond and correct any errors before they can be removed from the rolls, but Wiley said she wanted the elected officials to instruct Hancock to investigate the registrations of the voters she had challenged right away.

At the same meeting, Viens asserted that the county had no emergency plan in case the power went out. Hancock said that’s false: The county has for years been prepared to handle power outages, violence, or natural disasters on Election Day, and Hancock had generators and other materials ready to go in case something went wrong. Viens has requested a copy of the plan.

Another resident who frequently speaks at the meetings is Walter Daugherity, a retired computer science professor at Texas A&M. Daugherity often appears on the video platform of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, well-known as a promoter of election conspiracy theories, and at other venues pushing for hand counting of ballots. Daugherity has asserted that Brazos’ voting machines are connected to the internet and not certified by federal officials. County and state officials have said those assertions are not true.

Texas A&M University's water tower in College Station. On Election Day, county election workers had to swing into action when a line of college students began to form outside the polling location at the elections office in Bryan. Many of them hadn’t updated their voter registration and would have to cast a provisional ballot.

At the October meeting, he listed six urgent priorities for the Commissioners Court. He did not respond to Votebeat’s request for comment.

Mark Holtzapple, a chemical engineering professor at Texas A&M, has echoed Daugherity’s claims. At that meeting, he claimed that “ballot boxes are insecure,” because “the hinge on the locked box is on the outside, and all you have to do is unscrew one bolt” to get around the lock and security seal on it.

In an email to Votebeat, Holtzapple said he and the other residents are “not accusing anyone of anything. Rather, we are simply concerned citizens who want to improve election security, an essential condition for a properly functioning republic.”

The professors’ advocacy has spurred pushback from some of their colleagues at the university. Hank Walker, a computer science and engineering professor, wrote an email to Hancock in August to thank her and the staff for “performing so professionally with people who question your integrity.”

“I have known Walter and Mark for 30 years,” he said in an email to Votebeat. “They have good intentions, but they are wrong.”

Days after the public meeting where the activists spoke, Brazos County Judge Duane Peters asked Hancock to publicly respond. But when Hancock presented at the following Commissioners Court meeting, none of the residents who had complained were there.

The four residents later requested a separate in-person meeting with Peters and Hancock. She repeated what she had explained earlier. Holtzapple told Votebeat that the hourlong meeting “was not sufficient time to fully resolve the issues and generate an action plan.”

The residents compiled a 50-page document that lays out the issues they brought up at the meeting and how the county responded. They expect another meeting.

Viens said in a text message to Votebeat that her confidence in the process “will not be restored until the county complies with the Texas Election Code.” She specifically wants to see the county eliminate countywide voting, and use only hand-marked paper ballots.

Wiley, who along with Viens worked as a polling place supervisor during elections this year, including during the presidential election last week, said she does not trust the electronic voting equipment. “Once you click or insert your choices on paper into the machinery, who or what is really casting our votes?” she wrote in an email to Votebeat. She also echoed Viens’ request to help restore her confidence in the election process.

Holtzapple acknowledged that Hancock and her staff have made efforts to address the concerns he and others have raised, but said he still wants a more extensive dialogue, more substantive responses to the questions he’s raising about election security, and more responsiveness directly to the people who raise concerns.

For example, when a resident challenges a voter registration, “there should be a closing of the loop, that there should be respect shown from the government to the citizens for taking that time to identify people who possibly should be removed from the voter rolls.”

Peters, the county judge, described some of the residents’ actions and comments as a “constant barrage … I catch it, too,” he said. “And they expect me to change the system and go to something that I think is way less secure than the system we’ve got.”

“So I can understand why Trudy and her staff would be stressed to the limit,” Peters added. “It hasn’t impacted their work ethic, but I know it gets discouraging.”

A demanding Election Day: ‘They don’t understand’

Hancock was born and raised in neighboring Robertson County, and still lives there with her husband. Her first experience in elections was as a poll worker in her community back in the late 1980s, she said.

She spends her free time scrapbooking and screenprinting T-shirts. She often makes those for her staff, featuring messages such as “election squad,” and also makes them for friends and family at their request.

“It’s a fun outlet for me,” Hancock said.

She’s most proud of her two teenage grandchildren. On the night before Election Day, she was exhausted, but agreed to have them over for dinner. She made them pumpkin bread and brought some to the office the next day.

In the early morning hours of Election Day, Hancock had already answered dozens of phone calls from election workers at polling places who needed her help. If they were short on election supplies, she hopped in her small red SUV to deliver them herself, toting extra yellow traffic cones and curbside voting signs. Technical issues with the equipment? She knew whom to call. There was no problem Hancock and her staff did not resolve quickly.

Graciela Garza wears an “I voted” sticker outside the Brazos County elections office after voting on Election Day.

Krystal Ocon and others in Hancock’s office fanned out across the county, and fielded questions from election workers in a text thread that kept her phone dinging throughout the day.

Ocon, 39, is the Brazos County elections coordinator, and unofficially Hancock’s second in command. She was born and raised in Brazos. For the past 20 years, she’s worked on every aspect of elections in the county. She knows the process thoroughly.

Throughout the day, Hancock relied on Ocon to give voters and election workers direction, and to help when needed, such as when a line of college students began to form outside of the polling location at the elections department. Many of them hadn’t updated their voter registration and would have to cast a provisional ballot, which takes more time. There was only a couple of hours left before polls were set to close.

“Look at that line!” Ocon said, before swinging into action.

She quickly gave the waiting students directions: where to stand, what type of ID they needed to have ready, the forms they might need to fill out if they weren’t registered in the county. She told them what their options were and what would happen next.

Collectively, the Brazos County elections department staff has more than 60 years of experience. So Ocon is frustrated by the constant requests and skepticism from the activists. She worries that it could discourage the staff and weaken the department.

“They don’t understand how much time and care it takes to do this job,” Ocon said.

She points out that she’s had to miss Halloween events with her daughter multiple times over the years in order to manage early voting and meet state-mandated election deadlines.

“Do they honestly think that I am going to take time away from my family to hack the machines, change votes, and go to jail?” she said. “Heck no. So yeah, I take all of this very personally.”

Workers handle paperwork at the Brazos Center on Election Day. Collectively, the Brazos County elections department staff has more than 60 years of experience.

Poll watchers act ‘like detectives’

The tension between the small group of Republican activists and the county elections department penetrated decisions over how to best manage polling place staffing during this year’s elections.

Hancock said the Republican Party in Brazos, now led by Russ Ford, refused to collaborate with her staff to assign work sites for election judges, who supervise polling locations.

In the past, Hancock and her staff were able to assign workers appointed by the party to locations where they’d be a good fit. “For example, a location that gets a lot of voters needs an experienced team, and so we’d assign workers based on that,” Hancock said.

This year, the party made those placement decisions on its own, which by law, it’s entitled to do. In some cases, it assigned inexperienced workers to locations staffed only by other inexperienced workers, which led to some delays on Election Day. At one location, election judges were unsure how to process voters with out-of-state IDs or how to process provisional ballots.

And Republican poll workers said they were struggling to deal with the party’s own poll watchers.

“These poll watchers feel more like detectives than observers,” said Bill Edison, a Republican election judge in Brazos who has been a poll worker for more than a decade.

“Nearly all the poll watchers, except for one I had on Election Day, were from the Republican Party. And they’re trolling Republican judges, in a town basically where they own the county politically,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Ford, the party leader, said the party has been unhappy with Hancock’s staff’s previous placement of workers at polling sites. “I know she’s very dedicated, but we feel like we need to assert ourselves and make sure that we’re doing things right,” Ford said.

The activists say they’re working on behalf of voters who lack confidence in the process. Most voters Votebeat spoke with on Election Day didn’t express such doubts.

At the Brazos Center, one of the busiest polling locations in the county, voters cast their ballots within minutes. Voters walking out and back to their cars said they had confidence in the election process. They were unaware of any issues between conservative activists and the elections department, they said.

“Things are working the way they’re supposed to,” said Brazos voter John Borden.

“The process was smooth and fast. The workers are friendly,” said Omero Lara.

Amanda Cross, who said she hasn’t always had confidence in the outcome of past elections, said she trusts how the process is handled locally. When asked if she’d heard of any problems with the elections office or anyone questioning the reliability of the voting equipment, she said “never.”

Volunteers Maci Ramirez (left) and Brianna Garcia help transport ballots and voting equipment to the Brazos Center on Election Day.

It was Donald Trump who helped fuel a movement of election suspicion after his loss in the 2020 presidential election. Hancock doubts his 2024 victory will slow that movement down. Just the day after the election, Hancock was hearing more questions from Daugherity.

“This is the new normal, and that scares me,” Hancock told Votebeat that day. “The distrust in our process and our people. The distrust in everything.”

When asked how she planned to move forward, she said, “by retiring.”

The timeline for that will depend on the results of a stress test she had scheduled for this month, after the election.

“No matter how much I love this job, you’ve got to decide whether it’s worth risking your mental and physical health,” she said. “And that’s where I am.”

Correction, Nov. 15, 2024: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of the Brazos County Republican Party Chairman. His name is Russ Ford.

Correction, Nov. 20, 2024: This story originally misspelled the name of Walter Daugherity.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Winner of Missouri secretary of state primary wants to hand-count all ballots

2024-08-12T09:00:01+00:00

This news analysis originally appeared in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

The Republican campaigns for the Missouri secretary of state primary garnered quite a lot of national attention: One of the candidates (previously known for being a MAGA rap artist) sparked outcry from, well, a slew of different groups after she called Juneteenth a “ratchet” holiday and advised Americans in general not to be “so weak and gay.” In a sprawling field of eight candidates, she came in sixth.

The hubbub has meant that only local Missouri news outlets have really covered the winner: state Sen. Denny Hoskins, whose proposed policies would radically change the way Missourians cast their ballot.

Hoskins wants to get rid of voting machines entirely and hand-count all ballots. That’s a particular problem in Missouri, where a county can’t buy voting machines until the secretary of state certifies them. In theory, if he wins, he could unilaterally decertify every machine in the state, leaving municipalities to count ballots by hand.

Votebeat has covered — across multiple states and counties — the flaws of hand-counting ballots. For some local perspective on how much this would shift the workings of a Missouri elections office, I chatted with Brianna Lennon, the clerk in Boone County.

Long story short: It would be a monumental, probably impossible task.

Let’s take the recent primary as an example. There were about 30,000 ballots cast in Boone County — pretty low turnout, about 24%. It was a double-sided ballot that called for voters to make a number of selections. With all the local races and other requirements for language and access, there were 100 different ballot types — times four, since there were versions for each of four parties.

“The only reason we were able to accomplish that in a meaningful way is that we have just invested in ballot-on-demand printers,” Lennon said. “Even before you get to hand counting you have to be able to hand out the ballots to voters, and asking the judges at our central polling place to hand out 400 different ballot styles would have been impossible.”

But let’s pretend Lennon figured out how to do that, and then the county had 30,000 completed ballots sitting there in front of them, waiting to be counted.

“Hand counting would very likely mean that we would have to plan for a very extended post-election process,” she said. “We have two weeks under law to certify election results, and I think we would use up nearly the entire two weeks just doing the initial hand count.”

Then there are accuracy checks to be done, which would push the county beyond the deadline. All of this means getting it done on election night, as Hoskins insists is possible, is a pipe dream.

Hand-counting also requires significantly more people. In Gillespie County, Texas — which is smaller than Boone County — it took more than 200 volunteers 21 hours to hand-count a recent primary in which just over 8,000 ballots were cast. They did it in a winery, because there wasn’t enough floor space available anywhere else. Lennon doesn’t know where she’d find space, either.

Right now, Lennon recruits about 225 volunteers — a pretty big task as Missouri law requires poll workers to work in bipartisan teams. Given how difficult it is for Lennon to recruit Republicans (Boone is among the state’s few majority-Democratic counties), Lennon calls recruiting enough poll workers a “real crisis” as it is.

Her office has only eight full-time staff, and she says the expectation that they train and supervise the sheer number of people hand-counting ballots would take is “really overwhelming.”

But again, that was a low-turnout primary. In a general election, Lennon would probably have more than double that number of ballots on her hands.

Still, that’s not all Hoskins wants to do. He’d like to ban drop boxes, and he’d like to mandate precinct voting — that is, no absentee or mail voting — and for all of that voting to take place in a single day. All of these things, needless to say, would put in doubt the state’s ability to hold any elections at all.

The victor in the Democratic primary, Barbara Phifer, ran on a platform of ensuring fair elections and protecting public libraries. She will have a tough time winning in a predominantly Republican state. The current secretary of state, Republican Jay Ashcroft, won reelection in 2020 with more than 60% of the vote, and was initially elected in 2016 with nearly the same percentage.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Inside the private pressure campaign to force hand-counting of Arizona ballots

2024-07-16T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Republican lawmakers in Arizona privately pressured county leaders across the state to count ballots by hand instead of using machines, according to previously unreported text messages.

The messages, obtained by Votebeat through public record requests, are a window into how state lawmakers are trying to leverage relationships with Republican county supervisors — who decide how to count ballots in their counties — to promote a practice that state officials have repeatedly said would be illegal.

And it highlights how lawmakers have turned to counties to try to change how ballots are counted, after failing to change state laws.

In Mohave County, for example, messages show that Supervisor Travis Lingenfelter requested a vote on hand-counting ballots during the upcoming presidential election after state Sen. Sonny Borrelli, a fellow Republican who lives in the county, connected him with a lawyer who promised to represent the board free if necessary.

After Lingenfelter spoke to the lawyer, Borrelli checked back in. “When will you put this on the agenda for a vote,” Borrelli texted Lingenfelter. Lingenfelter replied with a screenshot of a meeting agenda for the next week, showing a scheduled vote.

In Pinal County, the day supervisors discussed hand-counting ballots in this year’s election, state Sen. Wendy Rogers, a Republican who represents parts of Pinal County, texted Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh, also a Republican, to assert that hand-counting all ballots was legal — something the Secretary of State’s Office and state Attorney General’s Office have said is not true.

“Don’t let them lie today,” Rogers wrote.

A text message state Sen. Wendy Rogers sent to Pinal County Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh, according to documents Votebeat obtained in a public records request.

Supervisors ultimately rejected their pleas. So far, all Arizona counties plan to use machines to count ballots for the upcoming election. The supervisors in Pinal and Mohave, specifically, decided against a hand count after the counties’ lawyers told them they would potentially be violating state law and could be held personally liable if they went ahead with it.

Adding heft to the warnings: Two Republican supervisors in Cochise County, Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, are facing felony charges for allegedly conspiring to interfere with the county’s midterm election — in part by pushing for a full hand count of ballots.

A text message state Sen. David Gowan sent to Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd, according to documents American Oversight obtained in a public records request and shared with Votebeat.

Other newly obtained text messages from Cochise County, which American Oversight fought for in court and shared with Votebeat, show that a state senator was trying to pressure Judd during the public meeting when the supervisors held the key vote on hand-counting ballots.

State Sen. David Gowan, who lives in Cochise County, texted Judd just as the meeting began, appearing to pass along a message from another Republican, then-Senate President Karen Fann.

“Does the Cochise bos know there is no law prohibiting them from hand count? From President Fann,” he wrote, referring to the board of supervisors.

Votebeat attempted to contact every public official identified in this article, and included comments from those who responded.

Push for hand counts persists despite known drawbacks

The issue with hand-counting ballots is not just the law. Multiple studies, trials, and attempts to hand-count ballots across the country — including in Pinal and Mohave counties — have proven that hand-counting instead of using machines would cost more money, require hundreds to thousands more workers, lead to inaccurate results, and potentially delay or disrupt the certification of results. Yet the conversations about instituting hand counts continue in Arizona, especially as many of the county supervisors run for reelection this year.

Cavanaugh, who is running for sheriff in Pinal County, says he still thinks Pinal should expand its post-election hand-count audit, and he believes the board still might hand-count.

In Mohave County, Supervisor Ron Gould, who is vying to keep his seat on the board, sued Attorney General Kris Mayes, asking the court to rule on whether counties are required to use machines during the initial count of ballots. A hearing date hasn’t been set.

Many election lawyers have said state law is unclear on whether counties must use machines for the initial ballot count, but Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Mayes, both Democrats, have said machines are legally required. In October, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that counties cannot legally hand count all ballots during their statutorily required post-election audit, but that ruling did not appear to directly address whether machines must be used during the initial vote count.

Gould has said he believes Mohave County’s current board would move forward with eliminating machines if a court deems it legal.

Senator texts Cochise supervisor: ‘Watching online right now’

The pressure campaign for hand counts has accelerated this year, but it began after former President Donald Trump began claiming falsely, and without evidence, that someone programmed machines to switch votes to President Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential race.

Multiple courts in Arizona and across the country dismissed the claims. Election officials have procedures and protections to verify machines are working properly.

Voters in most Arizona counties vote by hand-marking paper ballots that are then fed into scanners that tally the votes. The results of the machine count are verified by a manual audit of the paper ballots in a select number of races before the county’s results are finalized. If enough mistakes are found, by law, the county must continue to hand-count the votes on more ballots until the results are confirmed.

Just before the 2022 midterm election, a grassroots group led in part by Corporation Commissioner Jim O’Connor, a Republican, bombarded county supervisors’ email inboxes and filled the seats in county boardrooms with a call to stop using the counting machines.

Only Cochise County listened, and even there, the two Republicans on the three-member board — Judd and Crosby — wanted to keep using the machines for the initial count, but subsequently confirm those results with a full hand count.

On Oct. 12, the day after the supervisors discussed a hand count, Republican state Rep. Lupe Diaz texted Judd to assert that the law allowed supervisors to use the post-election audit to hand-count all ballots.

“There is nothing preventing 100% hand counts,” Diaz texted her.

Judd put the proposal on the agenda for an Oct. 24 special meeting of supervisors.

A text message state Sen. David Gowan sent to Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd, according to documents American Oversight obtained in a public records request and provided to Votebeat.

The meeting began at 2 p.m. At 2:34 p.m., Gowan texted Judd the message about Fann. A minute later, he texted her to say he had just spoken to the office of then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, and there’s “nothing that can stop a hand count in law.”

An hour later, as the meeting continued, Gowan texted Judd again. “There are so many in the Senate, who support you guys on the hand count,” he wrote. “Just want you to know, many of them are watching online right now.”

Judd, who used a flip phone at the time, said she didn’t immediately see the messages. “I had stopped reading any emails during that hectic time,” she said.

She also said it “wouldn’t have mattered anyway” and she was influenced by constituents.

She and Crosby voted that day to expand the county’s hand-count audit to look at more ballots than required by law. The motion they voted on was confusing, and many, including the Secretary of State’s Office, interpreted it as a vote for a full hand count.

In 2023, Mayes replaced Brnovich as attorney general and opened an investigation into that vote, as well as Judd and Crosby’s later efforts to delay the certification of the county’s election results. A grand jury concluded Crosby and Judd’s actions were a conspiracy and interference with an election, both felonies.

Crosby and Judd have pleaded not guilty. They are awaiting trial.

Texts show state lawmakers’ private requests to Mohave supervisors

Last summer, before the Cochise indictments, and as county election officials were starting their initial planning for the presidential election cycle, state Sens. Borrelli and Rogers toured the state to try to convince county supervisors to get rid of voting machines for this year’s election.

That included lobbying in Mohave County, where Borrelli lives and where he is now challenging Supervisor Buster Johnson for his seat in the July 30 Republican primary.

After Votebeat in January requested Mohave supervisors’ text messages related to hand-counting ballots, which the county is required to provide under state public records laws, the county attorney’s office said it asked supervisors to conduct a search of their own phones and provide any responsive records. The county attorney’s office did not independently conduct a search.

Initially, only Johnson provided records. After Votebeat pressed for more, Supervisor Hildy Angius also handed over messages. The law firm Ballard Spahr then sent letters on Votebeat’s behalf, demanding that the other supervisors respond to the request as required by law.

Gould and Lingenfelter then handed over text messages as well. Only Supervisor Jean Bishop, who voted against hand-counting, did not provide any messages in response to the request. She told Votebeat she didn’t have any text message discussions about hand-counting ballots.

The texts provided from Gould’s and Lingenfelter’s phones give a fuller picture of Borelli’s efforts there.

In early June 2023, Borrelli and Rogers went to a supervisors meeting and told the supervisors to vote to get rid of their voting machines on the grounds that they were insecure — though they didn’t offer evidence — and that the state Legislature had passed a nonbinding resolution banning their use. All supervisors except Bishop voted to have the elections director suggest a plan to move forward with hand-counting.

That included Johnson. But in group texts he was included in after the meeting, his own staff members mocked the idea.

“So did they vote to hand count???” one staff member asked.

“No to make a plan to hand count,” someone else replied.

“Oh for crying out loud,” the staff member responded.

On June 23, in a group chat, another member of Johnson’s staff wrote that “statistically hand counting is not possible … there is no logical way we can hand count the primary and general within the 14 day canvas[s] deadline.”

Another replied: “ha ha, well of course it won’t work, like going back to dial up internet.”

Asked why he voted for the plan if he didn’t support the idea, Johnson said he believed the board was going to vote to hand-count ballots. “The only way I could stop it was to suggest we have Allen come back with the cost associated with doing the hand count,” he said, referring to elections director Allen Tempert. “That would give time for the board members to think about what they were doing.”

Johnson said that he has publicly explained his reasons for not supporting hand-counting ballots, including a lack of problems with the current system, trust in the county elections director, cost, and the added time it would take.

If Republican state lawmakers wanted it to happen, he pointed out, they could have changed the law in 2022, when they had a majority in the Legislature and a Republican governor.

“We are an arm of the state,” he said. “We can only do what the state allows us to do.”

In August, Tempert presented his findings to the supervisors. He said a hand count of the 2024 election would cost the county more than $1 million, and require hundreds of workers and many weeks. Supervisors voted against the plan. Lingenfelter cast the deciding vote, saying it would be too costly.

Text messages state Sen. Sonny Borrelli sent to Mohave County Supervisor Travis Lingenfelter, according to documents obtained by Votebeat in a public records request.

Borrelli kept at it, though. In early November, he texted Lingenfelter and told him lawyer Bryan Blehm would be calling him.

“He’s the Attorney that will defend the County if it’s sued because of the hand count. ‘At no cost’ to the County,” he wrote.

After Lingenfelter and Blehm spoke, on Nov. 17, Lingenfelter texted Borrelli to confirm the vote would be on the Nov. 20 agenda. After Lingenfelter confirmed it, Borrelli sent him a smiley-face emoji with sunglasses.

That day, Votebeat published a story about the upcoming vote. That weekend, Mayes’ office sent a letter to Mohave supervisors warning them it would be illegal.

Lingenfelter sent Borrelli that article, as well as a related article in which Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer warned that Mayes could file criminal charges if supervisors moved forward.

“Criminal charges?” Lingenfelter texted Borrelli.

“That’s bullshit,” Borrelli texted back.

That day, Borrelli also texted Gould. “Please make the motion to approve,” he wrote. “And request a roll call vote.”

“I will,” Gould replied.

At the meeting, Lingenfelter again cast the deciding “no” vote against hand-counting.

Less than two weeks later, Mayes announced the indictments against the two Cochise supervisors.

In an interview, Lingenfelter said he had previously promised Borrelli he would put hand-counting back on the agenda if Borrelli found a lawyer who would make sure supervisors wouldn’t have to use taxpayer dollars for any legal costs associated with the effort.

He added that he ultimately voted no only because of Mayes’ threat to bring felony charges against supervisors personally, which he called “shocking.” If a court ultimately rules that hand-counting is legal, Lingenfelter said, he would vote in favor of using the method if that’s what most of his constituents want.

Johnson said he doesn’t know whether the county is done considering hand-counting.

“I guess it all depends on the results of the election,” he said. “When the election didn’t go the way people thought it should have, that’s when the problems came up.”

Pinal supervisors heed county attorney’s warning

Borrelli and Rogers had also tried to convince Pinal County’s supervisors to move forward with hand-counting. But just before the indictments, after the warning from the county attorney, they also rejected it.

At the request of the supervisors, the county’s election director began a hand-count trial in June 2023 using test ballots and found that each batch of 25 ballots was taking a team of workers about 87 minutes to count, or about 3.5 minutes a ballot.

In August, Borrelli and Rogers visited the supervisors and urged them to move forward.

Supervisor Mike Goodman’s office staff texted him before the meeting that they supported the idea. “Be bold boss! Hand count! Hand count! Hand count!” one said. “I say we stand up, stand out & lead on!!” another wrote.

The supervisors didn’t take action at that meeting. But months later they put an item on a Nov. 15 meeting agenda to discuss it again. That was when Rogers texted Cavanaugh and told him “don’t let them lie” about whether it was legal.

“By law, a 100% hand count can be done!” she wrote.

Cavanaugh texted her back. “I could not get any bos member to budge toward hand counts with volkmer talking grand jury indictments and pointing to ruling from appelate court,” he wrote.

Asked if Rogers influenced his thoughts on the topic, Cavanaugh said no. He said that he believes he and Rogers have a similar way of thinking, in that they are concerned about elections, but he also has to follow the law.

“I’m more cautious than a lot of people,” he said. “I try to base everything in law. So while I definitely support hand-counting, we have to do it in a way that is consistent with what the legislature has written and what the governor signed.”

Cavanaugh said that if it turns out to be legal to count votes by hand, and they can figure out a way to hand-count “accurately and speedily,” then he is OK with it.

“I don’t think the issue is dead,” he said.

Correction: July 16, 2024: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to indictments of Pinal supervisors. Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby are Cochise County supervisors.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Gillespie County’s election worker costs more than double after switch to hand count

2024-05-16T09:50:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

The hand count of thousands of Republican primary election ballots in Gillespie County is on track to cost taxpayers more than double the wage costs of the 2020 Republican primary, according to records obtained by Votebeat.

Public records show Republicans employed 350 people to hand count, who collectively reported working more than 2,300 hours the day of the election at a rate of $12 per hour. That means more than $27,000 in wages.

Those numbers aren’t final, and they’re likely to grow. The tally does not include hourly wages for election clerks who worked at each of the county’s 13 precincts on election day checking in voters and performing duties other than counting. In addition, Gillespie Republicans will also hand-count ballots in a runoff election at the end of the month, which will add to the costs.

Gillespie’s experience illustrates how election costs could rise if the method is more widely adopted across the state.

Four years ago, for the Republican primary election, the party spent less than $13,000 total on election worker wages, including wages for those who worked during a runoff election.

The initial costs also show the hand count of this year’s primary is set to cost taxpayers more than what the county spends annually on electronic tabulating equipment that can be used across multiple elections.

Gillespie County paid $160,968 to purchase voting equipment from Hart Intercivic in 2021, according to a source familiar with the county’s contract. The equipment has a 15-year life expectancy. In addition, the county spends $9,120 annually on licensing fees and technical support for the machines, plus around $6,000 per election for programming the equipment. Gillespie County elections administrator Jim Riley did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

State will reimburse costs — up to a point

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office will reimburse Gillespie Republicans and other local parties across the state for primary and runoff election expenses. Last year, at an election law seminar hosted by the office, election division officials told political party chairs that the state has a fixed amount allocated to pay for primary elections.

Officials warned that if primary election costs were to increase beyond that amount because of multiple counties hand-counting primary ballots, the state might not have enough money to reimburse all expenses. By law, the funds must be distributed equally across the state’s local parties.

Experts said the additional costs associated with full hand counts are unnecessary and fiscally irresponsible.

“It’s absurd to spend this money on this when elections in Texas especially are just so chronically underfunded,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a nonpartisan voter advocacy and government watchdog organization. “They could have used this funding for the election staff who are overworked and underpaid everywhere in Texas. It could be spent on election infrastructure so that voters have a more efficient voting experience, or on public outreach.”

Luis Figueroa, chief of legislative affairs at Every Texan, a nonprofit group that advocates for fair taxation and voting rights, said that over the past two years, Republican lawmakers have approved election policies based on administrative errors and discrepancies in Harris County — a Democratic stronghold — but are doing nothing about the issues that surfaced during the Gillespie hand count.

“A machine breaks down in Harris County, and lawmakers have multiple hearings and pass bills that not only would sanction them, but also to remove county officials, or want a redo of the entire election,” Figueroa said.

In contrast, in Gillespie, “they’re having inaccuracies doing hand counting, and there’s no accountability and no calls from anyone to stop this practice,” he said.

Bruce Campbell, Gillespie County’s Republican Party chairman, told Votebeat that increasing people’s confidence in the election is worth the additional cost. When asked if he thought county residents felt more confident about the process following the hand count, he could not say.

“I don’t have a sense of the county as a whole,” he said. “I know the 350 people who participated in it are mostly enthusiastic about it.”

Despite costs and errors, proponents stand by hand counting

Under Texas law, during a primary election, county governments are in charge of conducting early voting, but the political parties may choose their ballot counting method. On the day of the election, parties run the voting and choose the counting method.

In Gillespie, Republicans decided last fall to hand-count this year’s primary vote, more than 8,000 ballots in total. Experts agree and studies show the method is time-consuming, costly, less accurate, and less secure than using machines.

Nonetheless, citing unsupported concerns about the accuracy of voting machines, some people in Gillespie, including members of the Fredericksburg Tea Party, were determined to try and show otherwise.

The 350 workers recruited and trained by the party counted until the early hours of the next morning and touted the results as an unqualified success. But the county party subsequently had to fix a series of errors in the initial results in all but one of the county’s 13 precincts.

The night of the primary election, nearly 100 people gathered to hand count early-voting ballots at a local winery. On the compensation forms they filled out, some reported working for more than 12 hours that day, though others said they worked as little as five or even three hours.

The operational costs of a primary election vary based on the choices the political party makes. For example, parties can contract with the county’s election department for administrative services and voting equipment, or they can choose to have total control of the election and run it themselves.

Gillespie Republicans chose to handle almost every part of the election themselves. They printed their ballots and hand-count tally sheets at a locally owned printer in Fredericksburg. These costs, along with what the party spent on supplies, polling location rentals, postage, and administrative costs, such as office supplies and office personnel’s payroll, will be paid through funds allocated by the Legislature and distributed by the Secretary of State’s Office. The final total is still unclear. The Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment for this story.

Local parties submit a primary and runoff election cost estimate to the state, months ahead of Election Day. Upon approval, the state sends a portion of those costs to the parties, so they can prepare for the election and pay election workers. The final costs are reimbursed later this year.

In January, the Gillespie GOP estimated it would spend $34,210 on ballot printing and workers.

The state has allocated about $22 million to reimburse political parties and counties statewide for their primary and runoff election expenses. About $5 million of that comes from candidate filing fees.

Most counties decided against hand counts

Last summer, Republicans in counties large and small across the state considered hand counting ballots. Nearly all concluded that it would not be feasible, in part because of the cost. Nonetheless, proponents of hand counting continue to tout the method as a more secure way to run elections than electronic tabulators, and many are pointing to the Gillespie effort as an example of one that worked well, despite the costs and the initial errors in the results.

The push for hand counts is creating disruption in some communities.

In Kerr County, 30 minutes south of Gillespie, for example, Republicans have yet to win approval for a hand count, but the push to do it has already cost the county hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for additional staff and resources following the resignation of county officials who managed elections.

Mo Saiidi, a former Republican county chair for Gillespie who resigned after publicly opposing the hand count, said voters deserve more details about how that primary election was conducted and the public should weigh whether hand counting actually improved anything. He doesn’t think so.

“You have not proven that we have done any better job of election integrity or transparency, and at the same time, we have incurred an horrendous amount of costs,” he said.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Georgia bill to strip QR codes from ballots would cost tens of millions of dollars

2024-05-02T19:30:56+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

Update, May 13, 2024: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed this bill, SB 189, on May 7 without releasing a statement. Any funding for this measure will need to be addressed by the legislature in future sessions.

Tucked inside a massive elections bill passed last month by Georgia’s legislature is a provision that requires the state to spend millions of dollars to overhaul the state’s existing voting system, or to purchase a new one before 2026.

Election officials and experts say it’s an impossible timeline, and that the vague language of the bill may prevent the use of electronic tabulators altogether. Lawmakers allocated no money for the change, which would remove computer-readable QR codes and other barcodes that the state’s voting system relies on to accurately tabulate ballots.

“We’re talking about an expense of about $25-to-$26 million, to about $300 million, depending on how you want to do it,” Gabe Sterling, the chief operating officer in the secretary of state’s office, told the House Governmental Affairs Committee on March 20, eight days before the bill passed the House. If lawmakers wanted to proceed, Sterling told them, they should write the legislation to make the changes contingent on appropriating enough money to pay for them, and move the effective date back to give election officials more time.

Lawmakers have already pushed the effective date back two years — from 2024 to 2026 — but did not make the change contingent on providing funding. So if the governor signs the bill now, it’s not clear where election officials will get the money.

The ban on computer-readable codes made headlines when the bill passed, but the cost — which legislators have known about for months — has not been previously reported.

The legislation would make the state’s current voting system, put in place in 2020 at a cost of more than $100 million, impossible for the state to use. Sterling says that if the governor signs it, Georgia will spend millions of dollars “to achieve absolutely nothing.”

And depending on how the secretary of state’s office chooses to interpret the coding provisions, the cost could spiral. Because the state’s current system is designed to read QR codes, the least costly fix requires the office to update every single piece of voting equipment in the state — about 40,000 pieces of hardware, each requiring about 25 minutes of individual attention — and purchase a limited amount of new hardware.

The more expensive option would mean purchasing an entirely new system capable of optical character recognition, a technology for scanning and interpreting individual letters. The options for that likely won’t be available in necessary quantities before 2026.

Sterling believes either avenue is likely to lead to a lawsuit. He said the unclear requirements would also put the state and counties at great risk of lawsuits.

“People who like this and people who don’t like this will sue us,” he said, because there is no consistent understanding of how the language should be enforced. “The words in the bill do not make sense.”

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp must sign or veto the bill by May 7.

QR codes ‘may be perfectly fine’

The provision about computer-readable codes is a small part of the 24-page elections bill, which has provisions ranging from chain-of-custody requirements for equipment to the creation of pilot programs for new voting technology. A veto would force the state legislature to try again on the package.

In a statement, Kemp spokesman Carter Chapman said that the governor is still reviewing the bill, and that his office would provide an update after taking action.

Election integrity activists have been fighting the use of QR codes on ballots nationwide, claiming without evidence that such codes could be used by malicious actors to swing elections. State Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Max Burns, the Sylvania Republican who sponsored the measure, said it would “create clarity” and allow voters to know the machine interpreted their votes the same way they do.

“It is technically possible to remove the QR code or any other encoded, non-human readable content and read the actual content of the ballot,” he said in January. “We’re gonna leave the details and the technical requirements up to the secretary of state as they work through the implementation of this.”

In another hearing that month, he said the scanning of human-readable text could be “integrated” into the state’s current system. While that’s technically possible, Sterling said, the process will be slow and expensive in ways the bill doesn’t account for.

House Speaker Jon Burns acknowledged at a January press conference that he had a limited understanding of the issue, but nonetheless said he believed the transition would be “easy.”

“If you understand how the QR code works exactly, I’d be glad to meet with you after this, and certainly you can help me,” he said. Pressed by reporters for evidence of flaws with the current system, he said that QR codes “may be perfectly fine” but that the public’s lack of confidence was reason enough to make the change.

That was a popular rationale for many who voted to pass the bill in the House. But prior to the vote a few weeks ago, state Rep. Saira Draper, a Democrat, said lawmakers were “justifying sloppy and rushed policy choices by saying we need to bring more confidence to our elections, when you know just as well as I do that there is a very vocal minority out there who will never be confident in the process so long as their candidates is not declared the winner.”

She compared the bill to “negotiating with terrorists.”

Lawmakers were warned of the risks

The relevant section of the bill bans the use of “a QR code, bar code, or similar coding” to count ballots. All counting, it says, must be done using human-readable text, even though no voting system currently exists that meets that requirement as written.

One system, from Texas-based Hart Intercivic, has such a feature, but the small company is unlikely to be able to produce enough machines to replace every scanner in Georgia in the next two years. And even those rely on computer programming: Scanners aren’t human beings, says Sterling. They have to be programmed to read English words and characters in place of codes.

Records show Sen. Burns and Speaker Burns (who aren’t related) and other legislators ignored warnings from the secretary of state’s office sent over several months, which described this change as “impossible” to implement and “a solution in search of a problem.” Neither lawmaker has responded to requests for comment.

Given the wording of the bill, counties may be prevented from using scanners at all, said Joseph Kirk, the election supervisor in Bartow County, a county of about 100,000 voters in northwest Georgia.

“A strict interpretation of the bill could force us to hand-count ballots, which is substantially less accurate than scanning them,” said Kirk. “I hope the legislature will work with Georgia’s election officials in the coming years to allow us to continue to provide accurate results as we move toward the next generation of voting technology as required by the bill.”

Other developed countries do hand counts, but U.S. elections typically have significantly more choices. And academic studies over the decades have found that hand-counting American elections is error prone, slow, and expensive.

In multiple letters and meetings with lawmakers over several months, the secretary of state’s staff offered proof that the underlying claims of QR code manipulation were being taken out of context or misinterpreted. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has suggested other options to audit the count. The state also already requires risk-limiting audits by law.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

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Brazos elections officials shoulder new costs and burdens to appease skeptics

2024-04-23T09:55:00+00:00

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In Brazos County, suspicions about elections burst into the open last fall, just weeks after a visit from an out-of-state group calling for ballots to be hand-counted.

“Everything seems great. But if you study this, you’ll find that it’s possible to pre-program electronic voting machines and make it do whatever you want,” one resident said at a commissioners court meeting last November, without evidence to support the claims.

“Ever since these machines came along, I’ve heard nothing but accusations of fraud,” said another resident. “I am asking you to investigate. Something was wrong in the 2020 election. Voting machines do only what they’re programmed to do.”

Similar comments continued to pour in for months — at meetings, in emails to county officials, and through public record requests to the county elections department — from people who insisted that the best answer is for counties to ditch voting equipment altogether and to hand count ballots.

County leaders and election officials have since repeatedly tried to assure residents that elections in Brazos are safe and accurate. They’ve invited skeptics to help recount ballots themselves. They’re spending more money and investing more time to accommodate the residents’ demands for changes, even if they think the changes won’t make elections any more secure.

Still, in Brazos, as in other counties, election officials foresee no end to the demands from far-right activists who allege that Texas elections are tainted by fraud, even as the Republican candidates they favor win a lot of them.

So officials continue to work with the concerned citizens, and shoulder new costs, to head off what they see as the even bigger burden of a mandatory hand count.

In Brazos, the latest attempt to appease proponents of hand counts will cost the county an additional $14,000 for the November election, a recurring expense that will grow over time, said county Elections Administrator Trudy Hancock.

The cost is for a special kind of ballot paper that comes preprinted with sequential serial numbers, starting with 1. Voting fraud activists have demanded this kind of paper for years, arguing that it would help officials detect and prevent double voting.

Such instances of fraud are rare, though, and Texas already has systems in place to prevent it.

Experts say the preprinted numbering could threaten voters’ ballot secrecy, so Brazos election officials will have to take even more steps to secure the vote.

And with the preprinted paper, surplus stock cannot be used in later elections, Hancock said. So in the long run, it’ll likely end up costing the county more.

“Say that we have 20,000 pieces of paper that we don’t use, you have to add the total cost of that 20,000 pieces of paper,” Hancock said. “We cannot reuse it. We’d have to store that paper for 22 months and then shred it. It’s useless.”

How misinformation affects the push for hand counts in Brazos

Brazos County, home to College Station and Texas A&M University, has about 128,000 registered voters. Election officials here are among several across the state who have heard demands from far-right activists to switch from electronic voting equipment to hand-counting, a method that has been proven to be less accurate, more costly, and far less secure than electronic tabulating machines.

In some cases, the activists have prevailed over objections from county leaders. In the Texas Hill Country, Gillespie County Republicans hand counted ballots during the March 5 primary and kept finding errors in vote aggregations.

In Brazos, the movement grew after a group of election conspiracy theorists came to town questioning the validity of electronic voting equipment and promoting hand counts. At a public event, which made the rounds across Texas counties last year, speakers promoted their ideas based on election misinformation.

Some Republicans began to echo those concerns at commissioner court meetings. In October, the county commissioners sat through a presentation by Brazos resident Walter Daughterity. Daughterity, a retired computer science professor at Texas A&M and ally of election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, falsely claimed Brazos’ voting machines are connected to the internet and that the equipment is not certified by federal officials. Daughterity proposed shuttering the electronic voting equipment and hand-counting ballots instead.

Brazos County residents gathered at a Q&A hosted by the county elections department on Jan. 24, 2024. At the two-hour meeting, elections staff went over the local election process and answered questions about the county's voting equipment and voter registration management process.

Daughterity did not respond to Votebeat’s questions about whether he has any experience working on or administering elections in Brazos or anywhere else. Instead he linked to his “expert witness declarations” in the lawsuit filed by failed Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake. Trial and appellate courts in Arizona have dismissed her claims of election malfeasance.

At Daughterity’s presentation, Brazos County Judge Duane Peters defended the county’s voting system and assured those who attended that it is certified, citing approval to use it from the Texas Secretary of State. Peters, a Republican, has been a leader in Brazos County for over a decade.

Brazos County commissioners never considered a formal measure to ditch the county’s voting equipment and adopt hand counting. After the November election, however, the county expanded its state-mandated partial manual counts in response to the concerns of some residents, including Daughterity.

Done after each election, the partial manual count is a hand count of races from either 1% of a county’s precincts or three precincts — whichever is greater — to verify the accuracy of the results tabulated by the voting equipment. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office designates which races and precincts must be hand counted and then notifies county election officials.

Hancock said some residents didn’t like that state officials choose which races and precincts get hand counted. “Their theory is that at the state level, they know in which precincts we have altered the numbers,” Hancock said. “So they think that since the state knows that, that they wouldn’t send us those locations to count.”

So Hancock asked secretary of state officials for approval to have county election officials randomly select additional precincts to be hand counted. The secretary of state’s office agreed, and the county hand counted three additional precincts. The process, which found no discrepancies and showed the vote was accurate, was livestreamed on the county’s elections website.

After the March primary election, Hancock went a step further. She invited representatives from each party to conduct the post-election audit themselves. Among the Republicans who participated were some of the most vocal election skeptics.

It took the groups of Republican and Democrats an entire day to count more than 1,400 ballots. No discrepancies were found, and the count showed the machines’ results were accurate.

Brazos County Republican Party officials did not respond to a request for comment and did not answer questions about their participation in the count.

The dispute over how ballot paper is numbered in Texas

The other concession by Brazos officials, to spend resources on preprinted sequentially numbered ballots, is the latest episode in a yearslong dispute between Texas election officials and voter fraud activists.

By law, ballots used in Texas must be sequentially numbered starting with 1, and distributed to polling places in batches so that “a specific range can be linked to a specific polling place.”

The law also says that ballots at a polling place “must be distributed to voters non-sequentially in order to preserve ballot secrecy.”

How counties across the state comply with these rules depends on the type of voting equipment they use. For instance, some counties, including Brazos, purchase blank ballot paper that voters insert into a touch-screen voting machine called a ballot marking device at the polling place. Once the voter is done making their candidate selections, the device prints the voter’s ballot with a randomized number to preserve ballot secrecy.

The Texas Secretary of State and the Texas Attorney General have both clarified that this randomized numbering complies with the law. But voting fraud activists dispute this and continue to falsely claim that the randomly numbered ballots produced by the ballot marking devices cannot be audited.

Election administrators in Texas have the authority to decide the ballot-numbering method. In Hood County, tensions with voter fraud activists in 2021 over ballot numbering drove the elections administrator to resign. The county eventually purchased sequentially numbered ballot paper under a new elections administrator. The administrator did not respond to Votebeat’s questions about whether the new ballots helped restore trust in the process.

Activists have also made these calls for sequentially numbered ballots in Tarrant County. County Judge Tim O’Hare, whose administration created an election integrity task force despite the lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud, said sequentially numbered ballots would “make the election more secure, create more trust in the outcome, and serve as a deterrent against fraud.” The county recently approved spending more than $30,000 on the sequentially numbered ballots for the November election.

The type of paper required is more costly because it isn’t easily found off the shelf. It is custom printed by voting machine vendors. Additionally, counties have to order more paper than they typically would, to prevent a shortage or account for paper jams at polling locations. Election workers in Brazos will go through additional training to ensure they randomize and shuffle the ballots at the polling place to protect ballot secrecy as directed by state law.

In nations with high levels of fraud, sequentially numbered ballots can be helpful because officials can match the number to a voter and check whether that person voted already or not.

In the United States, election departments have voter registration databases, voter histories, and other practices in place that help ensure that each voter is casting only one ballot, said Mitchell Brown, a political science professor at Auburn University and an expert on election administration.

“What we track is who votes, not how they vote,” Brown said. “In some places, it’s a good government measure, and other places it is not. So the context of how [numbered ballots] are used, and why they’re being used really matters.”

In Brazos, Peters, the county judge, is certain this latest move to try to appease the election skeptics in the county “won’t prove anything.”

“It’s a compromise,” Peters told Votebeat. “I know they say they’re concerned about the elections… . My concern was that if we totally changed the way we do elections [by adopting hand counting] that it was going to fail and that we were going to have people who wouldn’t know what they’re doing.”

Hancock, who has been the county’s elections director since 2015 and has worked elections in Texas for more than two decades, said it’s quite possible that her efforts may never satisfy the activists. She only hopes she can prevent the spread of misinformation in Brazos. She wants voters to see that her office is “doing everything that we can to ensure that a person’s ballot is cast in a secure manner and counted the way that they intend for it to be counted.”

“So if I can add a few more hours to my day or whatever to help those people have confidence in what we do for voters,” she said, “then I’m happy to do that.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

A Cochise official’s vote for hand-counting ballots came at a cost. Will anyone help her pay it?

2024-04-15T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

Peggy Judd listened with interest in late November as Arizona state Sen. Sonny Borrelli urged county supervisors in an area he represents to hand-count ballots in the 2024 elections instead of using machines.

The Mohave County supervisors had been warned that doing so would be illegal. But Borrelli promised them that if they went ahead, “private individuals” would pay for a lawyer to represent them.

“The funding is already in place,” he said, declining to identify the private individuals.

Mohave supervisors nonetheless voted against hand-counting — but Judd, 61, a supervisor in southeast Arizona’s Cochise County, wondered if the offer of free legal help applied to her.

She could use it.

A year earlier, Judd and fellow Cochise Supervisor Tom Crosby had voted to expand their county’s hand-count audit of the 2022 midterm election ballots, and also to delay certification. The two Republicans have since been indicted by a state grand jury for alleged conspiracy and interference with an election officer, both felonies. According to recently filed court documents, prosecutors believe that in voting to expand the hand count, Crosby and Judd were attempting to delay or prevent the canvass.

Both officials deny the charge. A judge will hear oral arguments in the case on April 19.

Judd now says she was used by people who never intended to support her. Her experience could resonate with public officials around the country facing similar choices, and hearing similar promises about anonymous donors willing to pay legal expenses.

“I really need funding to help me in this case,” Judd said, but none has come from people like Borrelli who are pushing hand counts around the state.

“I’m pissed,” she said.

Judd has said little since the indictment. But in a recent interview with Votebeat, she said that after she was indicted, she got a call from her good friend Mohave County Supervisor Hildy Angius, offering help. Angius told her she had asked Borrelli to help as well.

Angius’ message to Borrelli, according to Judd, was: “Peggy needs your money. This is your chance to prove that you have unlimited amounts of money.”

Reached by phone this week, Angius said she couldn’t recall whether she spoke with Borrelli about Judd. She did say that she asked “everyone” to help Judd out, and that she herself gave Judd money for her legal defense.

Borrelli did not respond to two messages asking if he had offered Judd legal or financial support for her case.

“They don’t intend to help me,” Judd said, talking about Borrelli and the purported anonymous donor who had promised money to the Mohave supervisors.

“They think I am small beans,” she said. “I guess I am.”

In a later interview, she said she isn’t mad at Borrelli. But she is mad at people such as Mike Lindell, a prominent figure in the push to hand-count ballots, who often asks supporters for money to pay for these kinds of endeavors. She subscribes to Lindell’s emails, she said, and “it’s bitter to see him collecting every day for what I’m going through.”

Judd has raised about $3,500 toward her legal bills through an online fundraiser, and said her largest donations have been $500 or less. Angius is one of her top donors on the online fundraiser. She gave her $500 and wrote on the fundraising page: “This is about election integrity and State intimidation of local elected officials. This has got to stop now. Good luck Supervisor Judd.”

Judd also said that her role in the 2022 midterm election drama has been mischaracterized. She says she didn’t personally think there was a problem with the machines that counted the county’s ballots, and the only reason she voted to expand the county’s hand-count audit was that it was what her constituents wanted.

“I never pushed for it,” she said. “You can ask anyone. I never pushed for it.”

Judd said in 2022 that her vote with the supervisors to hand count all ballots after the machine count was meant to give everyone confidence and faith in the county’s elections. The hand count, she said, would provide “proof of good, positive, look our election system is great.”

“It was just to show them we have good machines. We have a good elections director. We have a good system here. You don’t have to be worried about Cochise County.”

With her trial approaching, Judd said she will be OK if she has to go to jail.

When the grand jury indictments came out, Judd’s husband was ill, and she said her main concern then was who was going to care for him. But he recently died.

“I will be sad, and upset,” she said, “but my husband won’t suffer because of it.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Backed by Mike Lindell and mysterious benefactors, the push to hand-count ballots picks up speed

2024-04-07T11:00:00+00:00

This article was co-published in partnership with The Guardian.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

TEMPE, Ariz. — At the local discount cinema in this Phoenix suburb this winter, a crowd of about 100 took their seats for something different from the typical Sunday matinee.

The man standing in front of the big screen, Mark Cook, packed up his life months ago to drive around in an RV for a mission he said he was called to by God. Their elections had been stolen from them, he told the crowd, and it was time to take them back. He dubbed his cross-country venture the “hand count road show.”

“Elections belong to us,” he said, emphatically. “Say it!” a woman in the front of the theater yelled out.

The ultimate solution he offered the crowd: Eliminating mail-in voting, counting all ballots cast at polling places on the night of the election, and, most importantly, doing the counting by hand.

Cook is one of several quasi-disciples of Mike Lindell and other big-name election influencers who have been spreading the hand-count gospel around the country since 2020, when Donald Trump began claiming without evidence that ballot tabulating machines were rigged against him.

The push to hand-count ballots is ramping up, albeit with spotty success, as the 2024 election nears, according to a review by The Guardian and Votebeat. If more localities decide to try hand-counting in the November election, results could be inaccurate, untrustworthy, or delayed, fostering more distrust in elections. In places that opt not to hand count, supporters of the practice could use this choice as a reason to question or refuse to sign off on certification.

Either way, it raises the risk of throwing the 2024 election into chaos.

“It just gives additional grounds for calling into question the results of elections when there are no valid grounds,” said Heather Sawyer, executive director at American Oversight. “There’s no good reason to do it. And there’s lots of room for mischief and problems.”

Did you vote for the first time this year? We want to know how it went.

The push hasn’t gained much ground in the large swing counties where Trump claimed votes were stolen from him. It’s been more effective in small or rural counties that voted heavily for Trump, where conservative activists have lined up at public meetings to repeat the conspiracies of Cook, Lindell, and others. There — in Missouri, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin — local officials voted to give hand-counting ballots a try in either their midterm or presidential primary elections.

These attempts have proven what election experts have long understood: Ditching machines and exclusively hand-counting ballots is time-consuming, expensive, and more prone to human error. It’s also unnecessary. Election officials routinely verify that machines are counting votes properly by hand-counting the results on a portion of ballots after each election.

Most recently, in Gillespie County, Texas, errors were discovered in nearly all precincts after the county tried to hand-count its Republican presidential primary election.

Nevertheless, Gillespie County still plans to hand-count its local runoff election in May. In South Dakota, there are efforts to get hand-counting through local initiatives. And in New Hampshire, one town voted to count ballots by hand after a concerted push by local activists.

This seemingly grassroots effort has sometimes been backed by outside funding and promises of financial support, some from Lindell and others from unknown sources, according to public records and statements reviewed by The Guardian and Votebeat.

Before a California county voted to get rid of its tabulation machines, Lindell wrote to a supervisor that if they “have any pushback, including lawsuits against you or your county, I will provide all of the resources necessary (including both financial and legal) for this fight,” according to documents obtained by American Oversight, a watchdog group that has tracked the hand count movement across the country, and shared with The Guardian and Votebeat.

Lindell told The Guardian he has contributed money to efforts in South Dakota and New Hampshire, but he wasn’t sure how much or how exactly the funds were used. He also features hand-count activists on his online video programs and helps them find donations that way. “Any way I can to get the word out,” he said.

Money wouldn’t come from him personally, but from an affiliated fundraising outfit, the Lindell Offense Fund, he said. His personal financial issues, stemming from lawsuits he faces, are well documented: He couldn’t pay his lawyers in defamation cases brought by voting machine companies.

“I don’t have money to stick in there myself. I’m reaching out to the public. … I’m not a grifter. I’d be the worst grifter that ever lived,” he said.

In Arizona, the push to hand-count ballots has mysterious benefactors, with an unknown source offering money for the legal defense of county supervisors who take on the fight to hand-count ballots, defying state law. Most recently, an elected official in rural Mohave County sued the attorney general, an effort to obtain a court ruling saying that hand-counting ballots is legal. The supervisor, Ron Gould, said in an interview he doesn’t “have permission” to disclose who is paying his legal costs — but so far, it isn’t him.

Mike Lindell influences hand-count push

Inside Pollack Cinemas in Tempe, road show attendees munched on popcorn and sipped sodas as Cook told them about a story he heard from a Texas poll worker. The poll worker told him they watched as a ballot counter on a tabulation machine ticked up one by one, but no one was inserting ballots at the time.

Many in the crowd gasped. “Oh my gosh,” one said.

This claim could have been referencing a viral video which showed an electronic pollbook in Dallas County adding voters after polls closed, which county officials have explained was simply a delay in the system.

Like many who promote hand-counting ballots, Cook subscribes to wide-ranging conspiracy theories about voting, and he told the crowd all about them. Their election officials in Maricopa County, he told them without offering proof, had caused problems during the midterm election so they could “pepper in ballots.” Election officials across the country used messy voter rolls to “inject” “phantom” voters, he said, again without evidence. And COVID-19 was born as a way to increase vote-by-mail across the country, he said falsely, just so the 2020 election could be stolen from Donald Trump.

The solutions he offers are familiar talking points among the Republican leaders who promote hand-counting ballots. They would restrict voting access, such as ending all early and mail-in voting, and purging voter rolls.

Cook credits Lindell with influencing his beliefs. He attended Lindell’s infamous “cyber symposium” in 2021, where Lindell said the “seeds were planted” for people to go back to their states to advocate against machines.

With Lindell’s assistance and coordination, the hand-count pushes have become more systematic.

He tried to rally the troops at a summit in Missouri last August, where he detailed “The Plan,” his step-by-step guide for grassroots groups and activists to convince their local elected officials to ditch machines. He advises them to talk about machine vulnerabilities, voter roll issues, internet connections, and other frequent talking points of the far-right election activist movement. Then, “call for the implementation of hand counts” and prepare to respond to objections.

Cause of America, one of several organizations affiliated with Lindell, says it has “over 300,000 volunteers on the ground going county by county to change laws, remove machines, teach hand count voting and more.” Lindell said he hosts a weekly call with activists across the country to talk about the plan.

Lindell held the 2021 cyber symposium in South Dakota, where activists are now working on gathering petition signatures to put the idea of getting rid of voting machines before voters in two dozen counties. Proponents have so far convinced two counties, Fall River and Gregory, to adopt full hand counts.

Some counties have objected to the petitions, saying the change could violate state and federal law.

“If the voters vote for this ordinance, we will have lawsuits,” McPherson County Auditor Lindley Howard told South Dakota News Watch. “If we illegally deny the petition, then the petitioners will file a lawsuit. I feel like counties were left swimming in an ocean without a lifejacket.”

In New Hampshire, a group used many towns’ “warrant articles” process to try to get rid of machines, filing petitions in nearly two dozen towns to call for a vote on machine tabulation. Activists in the state tried a similar push in 2022, but didn’t get much traction.

Lindell and New Hampshire organizers hoped for a landslide of towns moving to hand counts.

“Imagine the impact for the rest of the state.... Imagine the impact on the rest of our country! God willing, this will be our generation’s ‘shot heard around the world,’” a crowdfunding site for the New Hampshire push says. The crowdfunding page notes that Lindell funded a “digital mobile truck” to advertise for the campaign for six days at $20,000.

But so far just one town, Danville, has approved the petition to hand-count ballots in presidential elections. The town’s attorney told the Associated Press he doesn’t believe the change will stand because it may violate state law.

New Hampshire organizers didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Lindell has featured both the South Dakota and New Hampshire efforts on his online show.

‘No upside’ to hand-counting ballots

There’s a side benefit to the hand count fervor for the broader rightwing election movement: It serves to keep local activists engaged in the leadup to the 2024 election, notes Emma Steiner, who has followed the hand count push for Common Cause.

“It’s basically an objective that they can organize around, that they can lobby their local legislators and officials about, and something that keeps them motivated and their eye on the ball so that they will be available in the game for November,” Steiner said.

In Arizona, far-right lawmakers Sonny Borrelli and Wendy Rogers have traveled the state to spread the word about hand counts. The anti-machine sentiment is still running strong in the swing state, which could decide the 2024 election.

Before Borrelli and Rogers’ tour, Cochise County notably attempted to move to a full hand count, despite a warning from the secretary of state at the time that the move would be illegal. An unnamed source paid a $10,000 legal retainer for two Republican supervisors who had voted for the hand count to happen, according to their statements at public meetings.

Those two supervisors, Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, then later refused to certify the election, which required court intervention. Crosby and Judd were recently charged by the state for their role in delaying certification.

Judd said in an interview that she wanted to hand count ballots only to appease the crowds that had been showing up to board meetings.

“It was just to show them we have good machines, we have a good elections director, we have a good system here, you don’t have to be worried about Cochise county,” she said.

Judd said she didn’t know who paid the $10,000 legal retainer for the related case.

When asked if he paid the Cochise retainer, Lindell said, “I don’t believe so.”

In Cochise and elsewhere, the hand count push has driven out some elections officials, who have found themselves at odds with their county boards over the practice. Cochise’s seasoned elections director, Lisa Marra, left her job after suing the county for harassment. She eventually received a $130,000 settlement.

When Mohave County, a heavily Republican part of the state, was considering a full hand count of ballots cast in 2024 elections, Borrelli told the local supervisors that unnamed hand count supporters had promised him they’d financially support the county if there was any legal pushback.

Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, sent a letter warning the supervisors they could be prosecuted for hand-counting all ballots, and the supervisors voted not to move forward. That spurred Gould’s lawsuit against Mayes, asking the court to rule on whether hand counting is legal in the state. In the suit, Gould says that he faced “potentially losing his liberty and being jailed as a criminal, if Defendant Mayes is correct, for voting according to his conscience.”

Gould said in an interview that he sued so that the state would “stop threatening him.” He believes hand counting ballots is legal and would improve voter confidence.

Supervisor Buster Johnson voted “no” to stop the switch to hand counting. Borrelli is now challenging Johnson for his seat on the board in the July primary election, which could change the makeup of the board. Borrelli said in a text message that his run for the seat has “nothing to do with elections.”

In a phone interview, Johnson said he voted no on hand counting because, along with the legal reasons, he said, it would be expensive and error-prone, and it attempts to fix a non-existent problem.

“There is no upside to it.”

Borrelli didn’t respond to a question about the identity of the unnamed supporter who had promised to pay legal costs in Mohave County. Judd said that Borrelli has not offered to pay legal costs for her pending criminal case.

Beyond Arizona, places that recently tried hand counting have found out the hard way about its challenges.

Osage County, a small Missouri county outside Jefferson City, hand-counted a local election in April 2023 as a test of the practice, spurred by activists who convinced the county clerk to try it. Lindell and other activists now cite the Osage count as one of their successes.

But, County Clerk Nicci Kammerich wrote in a local newspaper, the process took longer and cost more in the end, even with a group of mostly volunteers who helped hand count.

Kammerich sent the article to The Guardian after an interview request, saying the hand count issue has consumed her office: “I do not have the time to talk. I get calls and email requests on the daily about this hand count and it has been really interfering with my day to day tasks.”

After the hand count, Kammerich heard from election judges who said they wouldn’t work again if they had to hand count.

“After considering all factors of this election and comparing it to other elections that are similar, I fear that if we were to continue hand counting it would cost us more in time, money, losing volunteers, and accuracy of votes,” Kammerich wrote, adding that her office intends to go back to tabulation machines for future elections.

How the U.S. counts votes

Most of the U.S. votes on paper ballots, which then are fed into machines that tabulate the results. Some places use touch screens, where people vote by selecting options on a screen and then cast printed receipts of their votes into machines. Machine-tabulated results are then verified with a hand count of a small percentage of ballots, with only tight races receiving a full hand recount. Some jurisdictions, typically very small, still hand count paper ballots, though these instances are rare.

The widespread use of machines is relatively recent: the Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002, allowed many smaller areas to afford tabulation machines, said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some of the proponents of hand counting may remember when their local elections were counted by hand.

Proponents of the practice often point to other countries, like France, where hand-counting paper ballots is the norm. But local ballots in the U.S. are often much longer and more complex than those in European countries: Americans vote on far more offices, and elections are frequently consolidated, so a voter will weigh in on federal, state, and local elected officials and ballot questions at the same time. Some of these countries don’t use mail-in voting, a more common voting method in the U.S., and they are smaller than the U.S.

“A voter in San Francisco in the presidential election is going to vote on more things in that one election than a citizen of Great Britain will vote on in a lifetime,” Stewart said.

Moving to hand counts brings not only financial and accuracy questions, but also logistical ones: it takes far more people and space than machine counting. In some counties that discussed the idea of hand counts, finding a place to house a big operation to count ballots presented obstacles.

Cook shrugs off these points. If we found a way to do it in years past, he said, we can do it now.

Lindell’s response to the pushback from elections officials: “They’re all wrong. They’re all wrong. … These election officials, they don’t know what they’re talking about. They absolutely don’t. They’re just putting it out there and you media people put it out there as gospel. It’s not true.”

Proponents of hand counting say it’s one way to restore faith in elections, especially among those who don’t trust the results. But whenever people claim an election reform will restore confidence in the process, the evidence typically shows it doesn’t, Stewart, of MIT, said.

“I don’t see any evidence that something like this would be the silver bullet that would restore confidence among the mass public,” Stewart said.

Correction: This story originally misstated who warned Cochise County officials in 2022 that their hand count plan would be illegal. It was the Arizona secretary of state, not the attorney general.

Votebeat reporter Natalia Contreras contributed to this report.

Rachel Leingang is a democracy reporter at The Guardian. Contact Rachel at rachel.leingang@theguardian.com. Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Texas county’s GOP officials declared hand count a success, but kept finding errors

2024-03-18T17:41:07+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

FREDERICKSBURG, Texas — An hour after Gillespie County Republican Party Chairman Bruce Campbell declared the hand-counted primary election results completely accurate and certified them as final, he found another discrepancy.

“It’s my mistake for not catching that,” he said, sitting in front of his laptop inside the Gillespie County election administration office Thursday. “I can’t believe I did that.”

The late catch meant that Campbell had to ask the early voting ballot board chair, who had already left and lives 30 minutes away, to return to the elections offices, figure out how the error happened, and fix it.

The election was a low-profile party primary, but stakes are high. Gillespie County Republicans, led by Campbell, decided months ago to hand-count more than 8,000 ballots. Experts agree and studies show the method is time-consuming, costly, less accurate, and less secure than using machines, but local Republicans, citing unsupported concerns about the accuracy of voting machines, were determined to try and show otherwise. Workers recruited and trained by the party counted until the early hours of the next morning, and declared the effort a success. Proponents of hand-counting are now touting Gillespie as a model.

But the county party had to fix a series of errors in the results reported from almost every precinct between the election and the canvass Thursday, though none of the discrepancies changed the outcome of a race. Travis County Republicans, who hand-counted some ballots as well, also had to fix discrepancies in their tally.

Texas requires partial recounts only for ballots that are tabulated electronically — there is no provision in state law to require the local GOP to recount these ballots or audit the results of the hand count. The Texas Secretary of State’s election division does not have the authority to audit the election unless Gillespie is one of the counties the office randomly selects for an audit.

At least one precinct judge acknowledged mistakes were made during the count but said they were caught and corrected that night. Campbell said he has full confidence that the tallying of the votes was accurate, and the party will not voluntarily conduct an audit or recount to verify the results.

Gillespie County GOP Chairman Bruce Campbell, left, and Gillespie County Elections Administrator Jim Riley review precinct vote totals before submitting them to the Texas Secretary of State’s office on March 14.

But not everyone feels that way. Scott Netherland, the election judge for Precinct 6, turned in all of the necessary paperwork to the elections office just before midnight on election night, believing it all checked out. When he woke up the next day, he decided to double-check the results. He told Votebeat that 197 voters had cast ballots at his precinct on election day. For each race on the ballot, the total number of ballots cast should have totaled to 197, including, for example, instances when a voter skipped a race. But in one race, he’d reported only 160 votes. In another, 157. As he went down the list, he noticed he had 207 votes reported for a third race.

“My heart sank,” Netherland said. He’d miscounted the totals in seven separate races.

Netherland said he immediately contacted Campbell, then rushed to the elections office to review tally sheets. In doing so, he realized that multiple other precincts also had reported clearly inaccurate totals.

If he hadn’t done that, “we’d be still sitting on mistakes,” Netherland, who’s been working elections in Gillespie for more than a decade and did not support the hand count effort, told Votebeat.

Netherland said he still isn’t confident the election results are accurate, based on the errors that he and others have found.

On Thursday, Netherland said the Republican Party in Gillespie has introduced human error into the election process with the hand count.

“We took something that worked and now broke it,” Netherland said. “We failed to guard the purity of the election with this hand count. What we just did is evidence that this hand count was not accurate.”

Other Republicans continue to tout the effort as a success.

One of them was David Treibs, a member of the Fredericksburg Tea Party who helped lead the effort to hand count. In a video interview posted on a social media platform created by Mike Lindell — a well-known election conspiracy theorist and the CEO of bedding company MyPillow – Treibs acknowledged he’d made errors but said they weren’t a problem.

“So there were two ballots, and I just didn’t add them up. So I would have had to add 450 and two, and it would have been 452 and I didn’t. I just forgot to fill it in,” Treibs said in the video posted last week. “So I don’t really think that’s something that’s going to shut down the election and it’s like, ‘oh my gosh, he didn’t add 450 and two and come up with 452 and now that means the whole election was a failure.’ Well, that’s ridiculous.”

A long weekend reconciling errors

For his part, Campbell said he spent all weekend before the canvass going over tally sheets and double-checking vote totals on documents called precinct return sheets — reconciliation forms that election workers fill out with the number of votes cast for each race on election day. He repeatedly found errors. All but one of the county’s 13 Republican precincts had reported incorrect totals on the official reconciliation forms.

Campbell, by Texas law, is in charge of the GOP primary election in the county and responsible for attesting that the results are correct. He said he put together a spreadsheet with all the numbers from each precinct and each race. He consulted with the Secretary of State’s Office and local election officials. He highlighted the errors he found in red and sent the spreadsheet around to the precinct judges, telling them they needed to correct the errors at the canvass.

On Thursday, during the election canvass — the official examination of votes cast in an election — all of the precinct judges, who supervised each polling place, gathered at the election office to correct their errors. One by one, they called out the correct totals.

According to the precinct return sheets from election night obtained by Votebeat, Precinct 2 and Precinct 6 — Netherland’s precinct — had the most errors with inaccurate vote totals reported in seven races. Precinct 12 reported errors in vote totals for six races. Precinct 9 was the only one with no reported errors.

Some judges quickly explained how errors happened on Thursday during the canvass, reasons ranging from “poor penmanship” that was hard to read, to accidentally writing the wrong numbers, or miscalculations.

The short public meeting lasted around 30 minutes. After their mistakes were resolved and results were certified, some clapped and said, “We did it!” Soon after, all the precinct judges except for one went home. Campbell and the Gillespie County elections staff stayed behind to begin manually entering the official results into the state’s reporting system.

That’s when Campbell found yet another error, forcing him to call the early voting ballot board chair back to the elections office for another round of correction.

After that, entering the results in the state system posed yet another challenge. When ballots are scanned using voting equipment and software, a report of the totals is created in the same format the state uses. The state requires those results be manually entered, separated by candidate and proposition totals for the day of the election, early voting, and mail ballots. But in his spreadsheet on Thursday, Campbell only had those totals broken out by candidate and propositions per precinct.

Gillespie County elections staffer Alan Littman reviews precinct totals at the county’s election office before submitting them to the Texas Secretary of State’s office on March 14.

Elections staff printed out the spreadsheets, laid them out across four tables, and read the totals out loud, adding them up with a calculator so they would be aggregated in the format the state requires, and then manually entered them into a computer.

This process took nearly three hours because they caught themselves making new data entry errors as they were reading the newly aggregated totals out loud and writing them down before entering them into the state system.

In Travis County, where Republicans hand-counted more than 1,000 mail-in ballots on the day of the election, there were also discrepancies. In an email, Travis County Republican Party Chair Matt Mackowiak said that in the race for U.S. House District 35, undervotes were inaccurately reported as overvotes. An undervote is an instance when a voter appears not to have marked as many choices as they’re allowed to in a given race; an overvote is an instance when a voter selected too many choices in a given race. After resolving the errors, the party is “confident now” that the results are accurate.

Experts say these mistakes raise more questions about the accuracy of the vote tallies that can’t be answered without an audit or a recount.

“This 100% is indicative that we know mistakes are going to happen every single time. And I don’t know how anybody would feel confident, after that many errors were identified, that all their errors had been identified,” said Jennifer Morrell, a former election official and an expert on election audits. Morrell is the CEO of the Elections Group, an elections consulting firm.

“The only way I can think to validate what they claim are the final vote counts is to run all those ballots through a voting system and compare the two outcomes.”

Morrell added that the discrepancies found in Gillespie and in Travis don’t typically occur in elections where voting equipment is used. Even in parts of the process where hand counting is used, such as audits or recounts (where only one or two races are counted rather than the entire ballot), “we find that it’s easy for people to make mistakes,” she said. And that’s especially true when tallying undervotes.

In Gillespie, the Republican Party has no intention of doing any sort of recount, Campbell said. Neither do Travis County Republicans, Mackowiak said.

Campbell stressed that each hand-counting team had a caller of the votes, a watcher to ensure the caller was correct, and three people writing down the totals. “If it didn’t match, they’d have to go back and count again,” he said. “You have three people. Three of them are not going to make the same error.”

Campbell said a committee was created by the party to study the hand count. The committee will survey every person who participated.

From left, Gillespie County elections administrator Jim Riley, Gillespie County Republican Party Chair Bruce Campbell, elections worker Joy Smith, an inspector from the Texas Secretary of State's Office and Gillespie County elections staffer Alan Littman work on primary election results before submitting them to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office on March 14.

On the primary election night, Joy Smith, the Precinct 4 judge, was the last to bring election results to the county’s elections office. It was Smith’s first time as the precinct’s supervisor. On Thursday, she also had to fix an error. When writing the total number of votes for a proposition on the ballot, Smith wrote the number 451. It should have been 415. “I literally just switched the two numbers when I wrote it down on the form,” she said, something she attributed to exhaustion in the wee hours of the morning after a long night.

Smith said the hand count made election day as a first-time election judge more difficult. “There were a lot of extra forms that we had to fill out that day, double check the tally sheets,” Smith said. “There’s just a lot more on your plate. But I am not giving up. I’m going to keep helping.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Texas county’s hand count results impossible to verify, and state law doesn’t require recount

2024-03-11T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. A version of this analysis was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Hi, y’all,

This week, Republicans in Gillespie County, Texas hand counted every single one of the ballots cast in their primary. There were about 8,000 ballots, each of which contained choices for more than 30 races. It took around 200 people 21 collective hours to count all of the ballots, and Votebeat departed the Gillespie County Elections office at 5:12 a.m on Wednesday after watching the effort.

It was a long night, and one that Texas Republicans are portraying as a success. A local conservative website praised the effort: “Following months of preparation, hundreds of volunteers helped count thousands of paper ballots within 24 hours.”

Most of the words in that sentence are accurate. Beyond the basic facts of that statement, however, there’s much more we’re unable to verify, despite being the only two non-election workers present for the duration of the process. We watched the ballots be counted, we watched them be delivered to the elections office, and we watched as — around 4:30 a.m. — the last precinct turned in its results.

Gillespie County Republican hand count stretched into early morning hours

You would assume we’d know a lot about Tuesday’s process, but we don’t. What worries us most: There is likely no way to know what the error rate for this hand count is, and there is ample evidence the county party diverged from typical procedure — including their own admission that there were errors.

In a video posted on social media Thursday night, Tom Marschall, who was the Precinct 1 judge in Gillespie County, said errors were made during the count. But he didn’t see a “significant” problem with that, he said in the video. “What is significant concerning the errors is that they were seen and they were corrected before information went forward.”

Marschall’s wife, who was a counter of mail ballots, said in the video that one team didn’t follow the training “protocol” and that led to delays to count a batch of 50 ballots. “I was not impressed with that team. So I think the training needs to be more thorough. And maybe the trainers need to explain why they’re doing it the way they’re doing it,” she said,

We have no idea what process was followed in the room where mail ballots were counted — a tasting room at a local winery. It’s worth noting, though, that county GOP officials repeatedly told us throughout the day that counters had undergone “six months” of training. Some candidates told us they were confident counters knew exactly what they were doing.

Media were not allowed to watch from inside the winery or any of the precincts — by law only the counters, poll watchers, and election workers could be in the room — and Votebeat reporter Natalia Contreras was turned away from the practice session she attempted to enter on Saturday. Despite Natalia sitting in front of the chairman of the Republican Party all night long at the elections office, he couldn’t tell us exactly how many counters were at each precinct, who they were, or whether even recent recruits completed a full course of training. The workers at the winery, where Jessica was stationed on a patio looking in through a window, would not answer questions.

State law is also not conducive to ensuring that these results were accurately counted and reported. Texas requires partial recounts only for ballots that are tabulated electronically — there is no provision in state law to require the local GOP to recount these ballots or audit the results. Likely, a losing candidate would have to sue, but there weren’t very many close races: Just one sheriff’s race is headed to a runoff. Many of the candidates on that ballot also explicitly endorsed hand counting, so they’re unlikely to complain about it now.

What we have written above is the entirety of what we understand about the process. To the credit of the county GOP, the evening was orderly and the ballots were turned in on time. But from what we were able to observe, it did not follow the same steps to ensure quality hand counting both set into state standards and also demonstrated by another Texas county hand counting ballots at the same time.

One volunteer told the conservative publication above that “each team could count a batch of 50 ballots in about one and a half hours.” Let’s do some math.

If we assume that she is correct, that’s less than 2 minutes per ballot. On each ballot, there were at least 35 contests, meaning that human teams of five examined the ballot, and agreed on what it said in around three seconds per contest. That’s really hard to believe: Voter intent (because they initially selected the incorrect candidate or didn’t follow the ballot directions and marked the ballot unclearly) is sometimes hard to divine and must be decided by a committee.

“Given the speed of this count, I worry about its accuracy,” said Charles Stewart, a professor of political science at MIT who studies election administration and has published peer-reviewed studies on hand counting.

This is much faster than hand counts that have previously been done. By a lot.

Cathy Darling-Allen is the elections clerk in Shasta County, California. Her county leaders have been advocating for hand counting since 2020, and last September she prepared a detailed report on how much time it would take after studying the process for months. It took trained staff an average of 75 minutes to tally batches of 25 ballots, and then they took an additional nine minutes to audit those results.

Told of the Gillespie GOP’s counting rate, Darling-Allen expressed skepticism. “Without any audit at all, I would say the results have no validity,” she said.

None of the public comments or interviews of individuals associated with Gillespie County’s count have explained what steps they followed when voter intent wasn’t clear, or when teams disagreed on ballot marking.

In Travis County, home to Austin and not far from Gillespie County, Republicans elected to hand count only mailed ballots. This represented a small fraction of the total ballots cast there, coming to just under 2,000 ballots. They finished counting those ballots around midnight.

Then they began hours of quality checking the results, entering them into spreadsheets. This process took another eight hours, according to a GOP official and county election workers. The entire process was video recorded.

Based on what we saw with our own eyes, that is not how things went in Gillespie County.

Precincts counted ballots on site, while early and mailed ballots were counted at the winery. We watched as their materials were loaded into boxes, and then driven directly to the elections office to be returned. There, precinct judges — the people who supervise each polling location — turned in paperwork that included the totals the counting teams had reached, and left. We watched that, too. Some of those judges had to drive back to the elections office after they were informed they’d forgotten to fill out information or missed a signature.

There was a lot we couldn’t watch, and there was a lot that no one watched. While we could watch the counting being done at the winery through a window, none of the precincts were open to us by law. Candidates told us they had a hard time getting enough volunteer poll watchers to watch counting in 14 separate locations, much less for so many hours. Gillespie County Republicans also did not set up live streams of any of the counting, as Travis County Republicans did.

So, let’s sum that up: In an effort to increase transparency and reliability, Gillespie County Republicans counted ballots without publicly explaining how, in a manner that appears not to have followed standard practice, and they wouldn’t answer questions about how it worked while the counting was happening. They finished counting more ballots in a shorter amount of time than a Republican party nearby that was also hand-counting ballots, and did not follow at least some of the accuracy and transparency steps that the other county took along the way. No one from the county elections office watched.

The public is left with few options to ensure that the counted results were the results the county’s voters intended. We have requested the tally sheets and the notes and every other public document that should be made available to us under law, and we’ll review them thoroughly with a bipartisan slate of election officials to see what we can reconstruct.

There is nothing that specifically allows the county elections office to check the results, since in Texas primaries are party functions.

You’ll read more from Natalia in the coming weeks and months about hand counting in Gillespie County, and we’ll try to answer some of the lingering concerns we and others have about transparency and credibility. In that spirit: We know some of those who were involved in this hand count — as administrators, as poll watchers and campaign volunteers — read this newsletter. We’d like to talk to you about how this went, so that we can know with more certainty whether it actually was the success they have claimed this week.

As established above, we have lots of reasons to think it may not have been as straightforward a success as Texas Republicans are claiming. Certainly, the lack of clarity around the process is in stark contrast with the amount of transparency the same activists have loudly demanded of Gillespie County election workers.

And, finally, there is one crucial error in the quote from the above conservative news organization: There were no “volunteers.” By law, every counter was paid $12 an hour for that work, and — as the organization notes — there were hundreds of them. Taxpayers will foot the bill for those paychecks, since the state of Texas will be reimbursing the local party for the cost of this effort. This was hugely expensive, and Gillespie County Republicans are not paying for it — the whole of Texas is.

If you’ve got any insights, reach out. And please stay tuned.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

‘Are you kidding me’: Gillespie County Republican hand count stretched into early morning hours

2024-03-06T19:59:40+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

FREDERICKSBURG, Texas — Bruce Campbell, chairman of the Gillespie County Republican Party, predicted that results from the 13 GOP precincts would start trickling into the county elections office by 8:30 p.m.

By 9:30 p.m., he expressed surprise that none had returned.

Shortly after, he informed county Elections Director Jim Riley it might be hours before workers finished hand counting the thousands of early and mailed ballots — a task they’d begun at 7:30 that morning in a glass-walled tasting room at a winery called The Resort at Fredericksburg.

“Are you kidding me?” Riley said.

Campbell wasn’t kidding, or even hedging. In the end, the counting took all night long.

At 4:30 a.m. Wednesday, Gillespie County Republicans completed hand counting more than 8,000 ballots, following through on a decision the county party made months ago amid a statewide push led by individuals who have promoted some of the wildest election conspiracy theories since the 2020 election.

Gillespie County Republicans decided to hand-count primary ballots even though experts agree, and studies show the method is time-consuming, costly, less accurate, and less secure than using machines.

Gillespie County Elections Administrator Jim Riley listens to someone speaking in the hallway of the Elections Office in Fredericksburg early Wednesday morning.

In each precinct and at one winery selected as the counting site for ballots cast during early voting, workers paid $12 an hour were hand-counting nearly 8,000 primary ballots, around half of which had been cast that day.

The workers couldn’t stop until they finished: Texas law requires the count be continuous. While the Gillespie County Republican Party has so far paid for the hand count, the state, which allocates money to reimburse political parties and counties for their primary and runoff election expenses, will ultimately reimburse most of its costs. The total has yet to be tallied, but that means Texas taxpayers will foot the final bill.

At the tasting room, called The Edge, ballots had been neatly stacked on tables supported by wine barrels, and estimates for when they’d complete this task fluctuated throughout the evening — from as early as 1 a.m. to as late as 5 a.m. Ultimately, party workers loaded the final set of counted ballots into a constable’s vehicle in front of the winery at 2:30 a.m. The final precinct would not report its results until just before 4 a.m.

Texas county’s GOP officials declared hand count a success, but kept finding errors

It was not the efficient process Republicans envisioned, though one carried out with no visible calamity. From start to finish, the process took almost 24 consecutive hours and involved around 200 people counting ballots. It remains to be seen if any of the candidates on the ballot will challenge the results, or whether this count will withstand next week’s official canvass. Texas law only requires that elections conducted on electronic tabulation equipment undergo a partial recount, so there is no such requirement here.

“You saw how this went,” Riley told Votebeat at 5 a.m., when all party members had departed the office. “This was a circus.” He said he’d withhold judgment on whether the count was accurate because he didn’t have eyes and ears in the rooms where it happened.

An election worker from Precinct 3 brings materials into the Elections Office on Tuesday.

For their part, the Democrats conducted their primary with the help of the county using the same machines they’ve used for a few years. Even with paperwork delays and a minor glitch at one polling location, the party was finished counting all of its ballots — around 700 of them — by 10 p.m. It was a light year, as many reliable Democratic voters in the bright red county chose to vote in the Republican primary in order to participate in a contested sheriff’s race.

Campbell said the party’s “original goal” was to have “enough volunteers that we finished counting before the Democrats did.”

“Clearly, that didn’t happen,” he said.

Republican Party official David Treibs had been the chief advocate for hand counting, and told Votebeat in December after the plans were finalized that the process was “not anything that’s really complicated. If you go ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5′ then you can do it.” Party officials expressed confidence results would be known shortly after the polls closed.

Treibs, a precinct judge and local tea party member, turned in his precinct’s election results — Precinct 13, held at an auction house — at about 2 a.m. The counting of 450 ballots wasn’t hard at all, he said. Figuring out the paperwork and reconciliation forms was more of a challenge. “It’s not like we do this every day,” he said, though he added that he’s looking forward to doing it again.

“Oh my God. It was so exciting,” he said shortly after turning in the results — visibly energized, despite the hour. “I was so happy with it.”

Bruce Campbell, chairman of the Gillespie County Republican Party, in the Elections Office in Fredericksburg early Wednesday morning.

Campbell, speaking to Votebeat at 4 a.m. at the county’s election office, was more reserved — he said he couldn’t say whether the hand count went well. “You’d have to ask those 300 people who worked and counted,” he said, including in his count poll workers who operated the polls but didn’t count ballots. “You’d have to ask the voters.”

He’s also not sure the party could recruit enough people for a high-turnout general election in November. “We’d need double the workers,” he said. “It’ll be double the number of hours.”

In 2020, Gillespie County Republicans carried out their primary with only 45 workers, and the results were reported in a few hours. None of the candidates challenged the results. This year, more than six times as many poll workers and counters turned up for shifts throughout the day — and some worked the entire time. Still, that fell short of the recruitment goal that party leaders told Votebeat in December they expected to clear without issue.

Treibs has recently begun publishing his own right-wing newsletter, the Fredericksburg Liberty Bell. In its very first edition, published Feb. 19, Treibs wrote the party still needed “100 more volunteers to help with the hand count.”

Ongoing conspiracies pushed out the elections staff in Gillespie County. The new director won’t budge.

Republican turnout also ultimately exceeded expectations in the county, giving Republican workers a larger task than originally envisioned and pushing counting into the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

A worker from the 9th precinct — a volunteer fire station where only 77 votes were cast all day — was the first to return with results just before 10:30 p.m, after it took four people more than three hours to count those ballots. Precinct 4, where 439 voters cast their ballots on Tuesday at a local Girl Scout cabin, was the last to report. The precinct captain left the elections office at around 4:30 a.m.

Jerry Vaclav served as a Democratic election judge on Tuesday, and said the Republicans’ elongated counting process and frustration over the slow trickle of results “serves them right.”

“The sad part is this makes us look stupid to the rest of the state,” he said. Of Texas’s 254 counties, Gillespie was second to last to report its results. Harris County — the state’s most populous and home to Houston — still had precincts outstanding as of Wednesday morning. The county, which has become well-known for its recent spate of election problems, had nearly 1,200 precincts.

Tables and chairs fill the inside of The Edge, a winery tasting room workers used to count ballots.

The tasting room at the winery, where about 4,200 early and mailed ballots were counted from 7 a.m. on Tuesday to 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, is a picturesque space. Counters worked beneath vaulted ceilings and in front of large windows overlooking a winding section of the Pedernales River. The Resort features a collection of tiny homes for rent, and is a popular destination for weddings. Its logo — a take on the popular “Come and Take It” flag — is a sideways corkscrew labeled “Come and Taste it.”

It was not the Republican Party’s original choice for this process, which had been slated to occur at a local church. Practice sessions, however, revealed the acoustics of the church were not conducive to several groups working separately at the same time. By contrast, the winery provided significant space with plenty of tables, designed purposefully for separate groups to gather at once. The party made the change early last week, surprising winery staff who were told the winery would be closed all day on Tuesday to accommodate the hand count. The winery reopened as scheduled at 11 a.m. Wednesday.

One of the owners of the space, Mickey Poole, is a former Republican candidate for city council. In 2020, a Gillespie County grand jury charged him with illegal voting and tampering with a government document, though the charges were dropped in 2023. Poole called the charges politically motivated. They stemmed from a ballot he cast in a 2019 referendum on fluoride in the county water system, despite having a homestead exemption in a different county and being registered to vote at his business address — a local Comfort Inn & Suites.

Poole had not responded to a request for comment submitted to the winery.

Republicans in Gillespie County began advocating for hand counting last summer, when the local party’s executive committee — mostly members of the Fredericksburg Tea Party — voted to ditch all electronic voting equipment used to tabulate votes.

That vote had been sparked by out-of-state election conspiracy theorists, who’d made rounds across the state attempting to persuade local leaders to hand count ballots based on unsubstantiated claims of broad election malfeasance. Among them: tabulation equipment was being manipulated by local election officials to change results.

Most Texas county leaders dismissed the claims. But many Republican party chairs in counties across the state — from large ones such as Dallas and Bexar to rural counties such as Uvalde in South Texas — considered hand counting before determining it would be more costly, logistically chaotic, and require around double the number of election workers or more.

Ballot boxes sit on a table inside of a winery in Fredericksburg on Tuesday.

Gillespie was the only sizable county in the state whose Republicans attempted a full hand count of their results, though Travis County’s party leadership opted to hand count mailed ballots — a fraction of total votes cast. With just under 2,000 such ballots to count, the party — which is significantly larger than Gillespie’s — finished counting around midnight, with quality checks continuing throughout Wednesday.

Travis Party officials worked with the secretary of state’s office and the Travis County Elections department to quality-check its count. Campbell did not immediately respond to a question about whether Gillespie Republicans took similar steps to quality-check their count. Travis County also video recorded its hand count process, a step that the Gillespie County GOP did not take.

A small number of counties with populations of only a few hundred also always count by hand, but rarely have large numbers of ballots or candidate choices, as Gillespie did.

Some of the Gillespie Republican Party’s candidates and emissaries were enthusiastic about the change.

“We love hand counting,” said Barbi Biedermann, whose husband, Kyle, was running to unseat Republican state Rep. Ellen Troxclair.

“I believe it’s a foolproof system,” she said on Tuesday “I think we are going back to how it was. If it’s not broken, why fix it?”

Her husband, with whom she owns two hardware stores in the county, stood campaigning in front of a precinct near downtown. He had been endorsed by those party members who’d advocated for hand counting. “I agree with everything my wife said,” he told Votebeat, declining to comment further.

When unofficial results were released on the Texas Secretary of State’s website, Kyle Biedermann was shown losing to Troxclair by 9 points. Of the five counties in the state House district, results show Biedermann won only Gillespie County.

Gillespie County voters had more of a mixed reception.

Dudley Kiefer, a longtime resident of Fredericksburg, cast his ballot at Precinct 7, housed at the county’s Farm Bureau. Keifer, who has been voting in the Republican primary for 19 years, said he preferred casting his ballot on a machine, citing ease and reliability. “With the population we have, we have to take advantage of our technology.”

Susan Boone — who also cast her ballot at Precinct 7 on Tuesday — said she didn’t oppose it, but called hand counting “unnecessary.” So did Tim Bowyer, who voted at Precinct 4, without any issues and not much of a wait. “I didn’t distrust the machines,” he said.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org. Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Ongoing conspiracies pushed out the elections staff in this Texas county. The new director won’t budge.

2024-02-22T10:55:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

FREDERICKSBURG, Texas — Jim Riley and his team spent weeks preparing for a forum he hoped would remind the public that elections in Gillespie County are “safe, accurate and dependable.”

The new county elections administrator expected more than 50 people. He asked a more experienced election official from a neighboring county to be there, in case he needed help clarifying election laws he’s less familiar with. He planned for a mock election, setting up voting equipment that the audience could use.

But fewer than two dozen people came. And some — county Republicans and local tea party members — walked out before his presentation ended. They’re the same people who Riley believes no longer want him in the job and who have disrupted the way elections are run in the county.

“Yeah, I’m disappointed. But the word will get out. They’ll go out and say that ‘he’s still there. He’s still standing’,” Riley said.

Riley, 76, intends to stay standing, even if it means standing up to the pressure of local right-wing activists who want him to radically change the way Gillespie elections are run. It’s more pushback than he expected when he took the job in August.

“I was just surprised. But I am dealing with it,” Riley said. “I’m not quitting.”

That’s no small commitment, considering Gillespie’s recent history. A little more than a year ago — following years of harassment by local right-wing activists fueled by unsupported claims of election malfeasance and conspiracy theories — the entire elections department in this Hill Country county quit.

Six months into his new role, Riley has signaled that he will not easily bend to the activists’ demands to fix county election problems that don’t exist. Since before he took the job, they have been mounting a pressure campaign to convince local officials to get rid of its electronic election equipment and switch to checking in voters on paper and counting votes by hand.

“If they thought that I was one who would follow along on this, then they were badly misinformed,” Riley said. “I stand by what I said: a hand count will not make elections in Gillespie better.”

A Republican and a semi-retired Presbyterian minister, Riley said when he sees a need, he turns to it and serves.

“In my own personal walk with Jesus, I want to be doing things that would be considered worthwhile. And right now that seems to be this job,” he said.

On Feb 6, 2024 Gillespie County elections administrator, Jim Riley, tells residents how difficult it would be to steal a ballot by going over the chain of custody process and what election workers and county officials do to ensure that ballots are kept secure.

“Thrown into a hornet’s nest”

Although Riley says he’s got what it takes to endure the big election year ahead of him, some residents worry the county may be at risk of losing yet another election director.

After the entire elections staff quit in the summer of 2022, county officials spent months looking for a new elections director. Riley had been a precinct judge — tasked with supervising polling locations — for the local Republican Party for years, which meant he was familiar with how elections in the county were run. While the job was vacant, he helped manage early voting during the November 2022 midterm election and helped the county clerk in the months that followed. County officials encouraged him to apply for the job; he did so in June.

Meanwhile, some Republicans and activists had been organizing an effort aimed at convincing county executives to ditch electronic voting equipment and instead use volunteers to hand-count ballots.

“We can do this in Gillespie and in the surrounding Hill Country because we’re small enough and we have enough people who want to know the truth,” Angela Smith, a poll watcher and a founder of the Fredericksburg Tea Party, said in July at an event featuring out-of-state election conspiracy theorists promoting hand counting – a method experts say is inaccurate and far more costly.

More than 20,000 registered voters live in Gillespie and about 80% are Republican.

Although county executives dismissed the push to hand count, by the time Riley was appointed to his new position, Republicans had decided they’d hand count in the March primary election – a move state officials had warned would require double the amount of workers and volunteers, of resources and a risk of legal challenges from candidates, but a decision the party was legally allowed to make.

Mo Saiidi, then the chairman of the county’s Republican Party, resigned last fall following his opposition to the party’s decision to hand-count ballots in the primary election.

“Anybody who would have come into that job would have been thrown into a hornet’s nest, to be honest with you,” Saiidi said.

Saiidi was a member of the election commission that appointed Riley. He said the county was left scrambling when former elections administrator Anissa Herrera — who’d run elections there since 2019 — and her staff quit. He’s concerned that it could happen again.

“It’s the same now with Jim there,” Saiidi said. “The same barrages of baseless complaints. This is not healthy, we’ve gotta do something. We need to let them do their jobs.”

“The will of the people”

Texas law allows the political parties to choose the ballot counting method for the primary elections. For the March 5 primary, Republicans in Gillespie have decided they’ll hand count all ballots cast during early voting and on election day.

The party is also taking an additional step to make its election more analog. On election day, the party will ditch electronic poll books, used to check voters in at the polls. Instead, they’ll use printed voter rolls prepared by Riley’s staff.

But during early voting, under Texas law, it’s Riley who gets to decide how to check in voters at the polls during that two-week period. And he has insisted on using the county’s electronic poll book – a system he says is reliable and more efficient in what is typically a high-turnout election.

That’s upset the local activists, who falsely believe election officials can use the electronic poll books to manipulate election results.

For weeks, Republicans and Tea Party members who opposed using the electronic poll books have sent out a ‘call to action’ for residents, asking them to write letters to county Judge Daniel Jones and other county commissioners in hopes they will tell Riley to change his mind.

Over a week ago, Republican precinct chairs Tom Marschall and David Treibs created a 20-minute video about Riley’s decision to “do something other than what the people want,” posting it on social media. In the video, they also suggested that residents ask the county to get rid of the elections administrator position entirely and give those duties to an elected official, such as the county clerk or the tax assessor-collector. Marschall told Votebeat that if Riley were to “abide by the will of the people” he wouldn’t have raised these issues.

“We just want to do it the old fashioned way and do it on paper, and nobody’s going to be able to add 1,000 names to that list when I’m sitting there, guarding it,” Treibs — who could not be reached for comment — said in the video. “Nobody’s gonna mess with that stuff when I’m there. I can guarantee you that.”

In the video, he went on to say that because Riley isn’t elected, “Jim Riley doesn’t answer to anyone and I don’t think that’s a good thing. But we want to try to pressure him and… be nice of course.”

Election administrators are nonpartisan positions appointed by an election commission made up of the county clerk, the tax assessor-collector, the chairs of the local political parties and the county judge.

A poll pad with an ID check-in is active prior to Gillespie County residents checking in for the mock election hosted on Feb. 6, 2024. The poll pad is used for voter check-in and verification for county and precinct.

“Right now, I’m experiencing a mess”

So far, Riley hasn’t budged on the demands from the activists. Instead, he’s been focused on rebuilding trust and learning as much about elections as possible. In January, he attended a conference and training for Texas election administrators, networking with other election directors across the state and with staff at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

He says he often calls election directors from neighboring counties for advice and doesn’t shy away from admitting that he still has a lot to learn. He takes tips and examples on what he can do to rebuild trust in local elections. The lightly attended public forum was one such attempt.

With the pressure of learning the ins and outs of elections, in a state where laws are often changing, and in a county where election officials have in the past found the job to be too much, some election administrators say support from county commissioners — who control the county’s budget and resources allocated for the elections department — goes a long way.

In Llano County, about 30 miles north of Gillespie, Andrea Wilson has been the elections administrator for over a year. She quickly learned that the job required her to become an election law expert, a record-keeping expert, a logistical manager, a trainer for election workers, a budget strategist and an office administrator to keep track of supplies, among other duties.

And the hours of work are extensive. Wilson’s kept track: The two weeks of early voting now covers 115 hours that election administration staff must be present in the office and an additional 17-plus hours on election day, she said.

“With all of that resting on your shoulders, could you then imagine having to fight with your county commissioners for the staff necessary to support that mission or a budget to pay for all the necessary supplies?” Wilson said. “Or even worse is adding to your already overflowing plate the spread of misinformation.”

Without support, Wilson said she wouldn’t have lasted a year on the job in Llano. She said it should be “the standard” for all counties to provide that kind of support to their elections departments.

When Herrera, the previous elections administrator in Gillespie quit, in her resignation letter she told county officials that “the threats against election officials and my election staff, dangerous misinformation, lack of full-time personnel for the elections office, unpaid compensation,” had in part made the job “unsustainable.”

Her staff was made up of one more full-time employee and a part-time employee. She’d asked county officials for two more full-time employees but the county only approved one and it’s unclear whether it was filled or whether the county plans to allocate funding to pay for additional workers in the future. Gillespie County Judge Daniel Jones did not respond to Votebeat’s multiple requests for comment about how the county plans to support its elections department and to help retain election staff in Gillespie.

The number of people working in the Gillespie elections department remains the same: two full-time employees, including Riley, and one part-time employee.

Although at times he admits the pressures of the job can be overwhelming and frustrating, Riley told Votebeat he is confident he has the support of Jones and other county commissioners. And he relies on his faith often to keep at it, any time he’s discouraged, he said. But he’s committed to running elections in the county as long as he can.

“In the midst of everything that is just kicking you in the butt. If you spend a little time in the word, spend time in prayer and you seek it through Jesus. You’ll be amazed at what he allows you to experience,” Riley said. “So, right now, I’m experiencing a mess, but I haven’t felt alone in it at all.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

The most important storylines Votebeat is watching in 2024

2024-01-02T10:30:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Strap in, folks. It’s 2024. I hope you all enjoyed your holiday parties, because we are in it now.

I’ll cut straight to it: Things are looking a bit bleak, and it’s going to be a busy year.

Hand-counting has supplanted ending vote by mail as the Bad Idea of the Moment. The high rate of election worker turnover has not improved, and might actually be getting worse. And state legislatures continue to underfund election offices and pass legislation that makes already underpaid county workers have to work even harder. These, at least, are some of the things we’re thinking about as we figure out how to prioritize the thousands of voting stories we could write this year.

Let’s explore each:

Hand-counting

It confounds me that this idea still has such a grip on a large part of the Republican Party, but here we are. We wrote about it a lot last year, and we’re ready to write a lot about it this year, too. And we won’t even have to wait very long: In about three months, the local Republican party in Gillespie County, Texas, will hand-count its primary. And we anticipate another wave of advocacy on behalf of this terrible idea for November.

Turnover

Last year we watched even more election administrators make their way to the door, waving goodbye to the stress, low pay, and increasing harassment they report facing in huge numbers. That’s left us in a precarious place. In 2023, some counties across the country saw elections beset by avoidable error — often in places where the election administrator was relatively new. 2024 will place even more pressure on these brand-new county workers. We’ll be trying to assess the damage that’s already been done, while keeping track of the attempts to stem the tide.

Disappointing Lawmakers

State legislatures and Congress alike have been famously underfunding elections — despite having a lot of opinions about how they should work — for years. So, too, have they been passing laws that have adverse consequences, unintended or otherwise. We’ll be paying particular attention to how the voting bills passed in the wake of the 2020 election shake out for voters in their first presidential election since their passage. And we’ll keep track of any last minute attempts by lawmakers to issue one-time funding infusions, since we know they love to do that during election years.

Now, I’m going to turn it over to the rest of the folks at Votebeat, who will tell you what they’ll be keeping their eye on this year.

Jen Fifield, Arizona

Arizona enters 2024 in a precarious spot, with lingering challenges to both 2020 and 2022 elections still underway. How they play out could influence the 2024 election.

The way election-related indictments and lawsuits shake out over the course of the year could give voters some clarity, and maybe even some finality, by the time they head to the polls again in November.

By then, Attorney General Kris Mayes’ investigations of Cochise County supervisors and the 2020 fake electors will surely be over. Two Cochise supervisors’ refusal to certify their county’s 2022 election by the state deadline, along with the fake electors’ attempt here and in other states to overturn the 2020 election results, created uncertainty around those elections. By prosecuting those efforts, Mayes will make the consequences clear to voters, county supervisors, and activists seeking to undermine 2024′s results.

Of course, the rules for how elections are run may be clarified, too. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ new election procedures manual, which attempts to clarify rules on hand-counting ballots, voter intimidation, and many other aspects of elections, will be final — even if Republicans sue over them and the court has the final say on what is legal in the manual, and what isn’t. And pending lawsuits challenging how counties count mail ballots and whether unstaffed drop boxes are allowed will be decided — or, if not, status quo will apply for the 2024 election.

In the Legislature, there’s little optimism that the political stalemate between Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will crack. That means we’ll keep our eyes on the counties and the courts, instead.

Jen’s favorite story she wrote in 2023: Arizona voters were told the election went fine. Records show a county director saw glaring errors, cashed out, then fled.

Oralandar Brand-Williams, Michigan

Michigan lawmakers have spent the past year revamping Michigan’s voting laws in ways aimed at boosting voter access. In late November, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed 23 new election and democracy bills into law.

In 2024, Votebeat will be watching to see how the new laws work during a presidential election.

The new laws include a minimum of nine days of early in-person voting, pre-registration of 16-years-olds who become eligible to vote at age 18, and — in 2025 — automatic voter registration of individuals leaving prison after serving their sentences. Now, thousands of local election officials across the state have to successfully put the new laws into effect.

Will the new laws get more people out to the polls to take part in this country’s democracy? We’ll be watching to see if the new laws will indeed prompt more participation.

Also, I will be watching to see how clerks are able to handle the extra days of voting and whether they can recruit the additional poll workers they’ll need to do so. Michigan election officials have put out a call for more poll workers.

The Legislature could also have more election bills coming. Michigan voters will be seeing a lot of changes to the system this year, and we’ll be watching how it goes.

Oralandar’s favorite story she wrote in 2023: Some communities are kicking off Michigan’s historic early voting with this fall’s municipal elections

Carter Walker, Pennsylvania

Like many states, Pennsylvania will be facing a deficit next year — in knowledge. We’re still gathering data, but it looks as if the state’s local election directors will collectively have 200 years less experience for this November’s election than they did at the start of 2020. We’ll be watching to see what that means for voters.

Many counties have lost decades of experience. Take Lebanon County, where the director and deputy administering the 2019 municipal election had 27 years of experience combined, compared to less than four years combined experience today. Other counties, such as Greene — which is on its sixth director since 2020 — have cycled through a host of election officials.

In 2022, Luzerne County showed us the problems election director turnover can cause. The constant churn of personnel led to a ballot paper shortage during the midterm election that brought national attention to the county. Pennsylvania saw more ballot errors this year than in any election year since no-excuse mail ballot voting went into effect. This loss of experience is probably the largest and most unappreciated election challenge facing the state this year.

So I’ll be paying attention, examining whether new directors can gain enough experience before the November election and whether the Department of State’s training programs are sufficient.

Carter’s favorite story he wrote in 2023: Why election problems continue to plague this northeast Pa. county

Natalia Contreras, Texas

A big chunk of my time in 2023 was spent reporting on a push by right-wing election conspiracy theorists to persuade Texas election officials to ditch electronic voting equipment and hand-count ballots instead. The topic was a point of contention among election officials this year, and it’s already having an impact on the planning of the March 2024 primary.

Counting ballots by hand has been widely proven to lead to errors, election lawsuits, and the potential disenfranchisement of voters. Nonetheless, fueled by election conspiracy theories, the GOP in one county — Gillespie, in the Texas Hill Country — will hand-count its primary election results without the help of the county’s elections department.

Although Republicans in Gillespie are the only ones making such a wholesale change, what happens there in March could be a powerful indicator of what’s to come for the remainder of 2024.

Will election skeptics be convinced this method isn’t reliable and put it to bed? Will it fuel calls for even more change in election legislation? How exactly will it impact voters’ trust in elections? We plan on being there to see how this plays out.

At least one other consequence of election conspiracy theories that I am keeping a close eye on in 2024 is the Texas withdrawal from ERIC, the multi-state coalition that helps states clean voter rolls and prevent voter fraud.

Natalia’s favorite story she wrote in 2023: Overlooked law requires election equipment that doesn’t exist, at a cost of $116 million

Carrie Levine, story editor

As always, I’ll spend 2024 trying to understand why some potentially damaging ideas — such as the hand-counting push — find traction around the country. Are such movements truly organic, or are there people promoting potentially disenfranchising methods for their own reasons?

Such questions will be increasingly important as Votebeat’s reporters cover the lead-up to a high-turnout, high-pressure presidential election, the first since 2020. Will democratic processes and customs hold? Will journalists be able to unravel the new conspiracy theories and false information that will certainly emerge?

Three years of turmoil over elections has pushed experienced election officials out of their jobs, forcing turnover at a critical time. It isn’t clear how that will affect 2024, but we’ll be watching.

Chad Lorenz, editor-in-chief

Votebeat’s mission is to help people understand our system of democracy so they can participate in strengthening it. Note that there’s a role for you in that mission, and we take that last part very seriously. Our journalism is designed with our readers in mind — not simply to inform them but give them information they can do something with: a prompt to participate in strengthening elections and voting, and the knowledge that they will need in order to do it.

As an editor, I often imagine the proverbial reader sitting at their desk finishing one of our articles and reacting to what they just learned. As I picture them, the reaction I would least want to see is a reader stroking their chin and murmuring, “Hmmm, how interesting.” I don’t want Votebeat readers passively musing that our journalism is interesting. I want them pounding a fist into their palm and huffing, “That sounds messed up!” or “There’s got to be a better way!” or “Yes, what a fantastic idea for making elections better!”

Whether you run elections for your county, or you make decisions about elections in your state, or you are working to improve voting for a nonprofit, or you are simply someone who cares about your ability to vote, Votebeat journalism is here not just to inspire your reaction but also your action.

One of my favorite kinds of messages in our newsroom’s chat system is when a reporter pings us to say that they just heard residents talk at a county board meeting about one of our stories — lately Cochise County, Arizona — and that those residents voiced their opinion to local officials about some major election issue we raised. Or when a reporter says that lawmakers referred to Votebeat reporting on the floor of the legislature, as has happened a few times this year in Texas.

That’s why in 2024, we aim to produce more journalism that you can use to do your part in strengthening our democracy. We have lots of ideas, but we would be more confident if we could hear it from you. Read on for more about that..

Lauren Aguirre, engagement editor

In 2024, I’m going to be keeping readers like you in mind.

Seriously.

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Texas Republicans want to hand count 2024 primary ballots. Experts say it’s “a recipe for disaster.”

2023-12-21T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

When Gillespie County Republicans conduct their primary in March, they will count votes in an ill-advised way: by hand, using scores of volunteers, without any machines.

Even if they can pull off their expensive, labor-intensive plan, they risk being sued by losing candidates or reprimanded by the state. And they may run up a huge bill of unnecessary costs.

“Hand-counting is a recipe for disaster,” said Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University and election administration expert. He and most other experts agree on this, and studies back them up: The method is time-consuming, costly, less accurate, and less secure than using machines to tally votes.

The factors that led Gillespie Republicans to this plan are not unique to this rural county of nearly 30,000 people, west of Austin in Texas’ Hill Country. This summer, leaders of the GOP in counties as large as Dallas and as small as Uvalde in South Texas seriously considered hand-counting ballots for their primary elections, according to public records and interviews with election officials.

The phenomenon has been a shock to Stein, who said the effort could undermine confidence in the outcome of the election.

“It will not be reliable nor valid. It’ll cost an enormous amount of money and everyone, every candidate, will be challenging the count,” he said.

Party leadership in larger counties have, so far, resisted a full hand count. In Dallas County, leadership determined it would be impossible with present resources. In Travis County, the local GOP decided on a significantly watered-down hand-counting plan, focusing on a small percentage of primary ballots cast.

Gillespie County Republicans, though, must now recruit and train 100 additional election workers to do the election day tasks that normally fall to county election workers.

Then there’s the enormous job of manually tallying the votes in the roughly dozens of races on the more than 3,000 ballots expected to be cast in the primary, racing against the clock to finish before the state’s 24-hour deadline for reporting results.

But party official David Treibs, a precinct chair who’s been leading the hand-count planning, doesn’t think it will be much of a hassle.

“It’s not anything that’s really complicated. If you go ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5′ then you can do it,” Treibs, who has no experience hand-counting ballots, told Votebeat. “So it’s not like calculus, you know? If you have a good attention span, then I think most people can do it.”

Ben Adida, executive director for VotingWorks, a nonprofit voting system vendor, which helped the state of Georgia perform a hand-counted audit of the state’s 2020 presidential results, agreed that hand-counting was nothing like calculus. But, he said, it was also nothing like counting to five.

“Imagine being asked to count the number of sheets in a large ream of paper, the kind you get from Staples,” he said. Mistakes aren’t allowed, nor are programs like Excel. Plus, “You have to do it 80 times, because there are 40 contests with 2 candidates each.”

Adida said he understands why hand-counting sounds easy, but once you’ve done it, you quickly realize it’s a daunting process with dozens of steps.

Citing his opposition to hand-counting ballots, Gillespie County GOP Chair Mo Saiidi resigned in September. Days after his departure, the remaining members of county Republican leadership finalized their decision to move forward.

“I could not in good conscience continue presiding over an election using a method that I did not feel was the right process to go through,” Saiidi said. “And I felt it was flawed. I felt it was not well thought out. I didn’t think it was the right thing for the community.”

Things have been spiraling out of control in Gillespie elections for nearly two years. In 2022, the county’s entire elections department quit following harassment and threats from far-right voter fraud activists. This year, voter fraud activists in the county were hosting events featuring well-known conspiracy theorists, pushing for hand counts.

Jim Riley, who was hired earlier this year to lead the decimated elections department, did not respond to Votebeat’s multiple requests for comment.

Bruce Campbell, the Gillespie County Republican Party chair who replaced Saiidi, told Votebeat last week there’s “no effort or willingness” from the party to back out of hand-counting. Texas election administrators see the end of the year as the drop-dead deadline for making such decisions, so it’s likely too late to back out.

“We’re pretty much on that path now,” Campbell said. Volunteers have been practicing hand-counting and he’s certain they’ll be ready on election day. “Everybody that’s going to do it will have done it enough that it won’t be new to them,” he said.

Under Texas law, during a primary election — which lasts for two weeks and through the Friday before election day, March 5 — county governments operate early voting, though parties can choose their counting method. On Election Day, the political parties are free to run voting and the counting method in any way they choose so long as it’s legal.

Across the state, county parties select from a variety of options, ranging from contracting the entirety of the process out to the county elections department — to use county-owned voting and tabulation equipment — to retaining complete party control. The operational costs of the primary election varies based on the method of counting the parties decide to use.

In 2020, Dallas County’s Republican Primary — contracting for county services on election day only — cost more than $300,000, records show. This included hourly payments to more than 750 election workers. In Travis, Republicans paid more than $70,000 for 450 hourly workers on election day. In Gillespie, the same day cost more than $8,000, including 45 workers. Experts say these costs would more than double under hand-counting regimes because the method requires more people, in some cases additional polling locations, more space, and far more time.

Records show that Republican county party leaders, including Gillespie County GOP leaders, had only a fleeting notion of what the financial or legal requirements for operating election day voting and tabulation entailed when they began their advocacy for hand-counting.

“Now we need help! We have to run two elections all by ourselves,” Treibs, the Gillespie precinct official, wrote in an August email to the secretary of state’s election division in reference to the primary and the runoff election. The secretary of state’s office received similar emails, calls, and text messages from other county Republican leaders throughout the summer from across the state, records show.

State law requires a minimum of three poll workers at each polling location. To hand-count, at least three additional workers are required. By law, these workers are paid by the hour, and though parties can recruit unpaid volunteers, state officials advise against it to prevent legal disputes. Hand-counting often takes days rather than hours, stretching the limitations of unpaid work. Records show county officials didn’t recognize how quickly costs and responsibilities would mount until they’d already told constituents hand-counting was a real possibility.

“We are choosing to not use any electronic devices during the 2024 election year,” Uvalde County GOP Chair Rhonda Vigil wrote in an August email to the secretary of state’s election division. “Please send me the information needed so I can show anyone that I ask that everything that I’m doing is perfectly legal. Thank you very much for your help and your time. God bless.”

As party chairs have slowly debated their plans for running their primaries, some county election administrators were left to fret.

“Dallas County is anxious to obtain the Secretary of State’s guidance regarding conducting a hand count during a Primary Election,” Dallas County elections administrator Michael Scarpello wrote in an October email. “Not having that information is significantly hampering our efforts to plan for the Primary with both the Democratic and Republican parties.”

Dallas County Republicans would ultimately decide against hand-counting because there was almost no way for the party to recruit and train more than 1,000 election workers and to gather the additional supplies needed to pull it off. After weeks of investigating the feasibility, the party determined it was not possible under current law, Jennifer Stoddard Hajdu, the Dallas County GOP chair, told Votebeat.

For instance, to count by hand in a county that size, the party would have had to purchase 2,400 ballot boxes — special boxes that meet state law requirements to keep ballots secure — that cost $150 each, she said. Stoddard Hajdu says now the party has created a task force to research what changes the Legislature could make to make it easier to pursue a hand count.

Following the various emails and calls with questions the secretary of state’s office received about hand counting, it warned officials that it may not have enough money to reimburse every county party that chooses to hand-count, due to the high costs.

The state currently has about $22 million allocated to reimburse political parties and counties for their primary and runoff election expenses. About $5 million of that comes from candidate filing fees.

At an Austin gathering of more than 500 local party chairs in September, Christina Adkins, the state’s elections division director, warned the costs might quickly spiral out of control.

“It is entirely possible that your costs may exceed our ability to pay for the primary election,” she said, standing behind a podium inside a large hotel ballroom. For over an hour, Adkins went through slide after slide of a presentation detailing rules, procedures, and logistical requirements of a hand count. “If everybody in the state goes to hand-counting, we may not have the funds to pay for everything.”

That caused discomfort and surprise in the room. It also left many of the attendees with more questions. “What if we underestimate the number of people we have to hand-count and we don’t make the 24-hour deadline?” one person asked, referencing the length of time under law each county has to return results.

A Dallas-area activist expressed concern over possible costs. “We need to know how much money you’re going to authorize because the number we have right now is high,” she told Adkins.

Adkins directed every party chair in the room considering a hand count to take a look at how much a previous similar election cost them and to consider the fact that additional workers, additional hours, and additional supplies would be required.

She also did not waver on one point: No county will get a pass on following the law because of the logistical difficulties of hand-counting.

“The law spells out exactly how a hand count has to occur. I cannot give you a dispensation. That’s the word that keeps coming up: ‘Well, can you give us a dispensation to do this a different way?’” Adkins said to the crowd in September. “I cannot. You have to follow state law.”

While other large county Republican parties — such as those in Dallas and Bexar — briefly entertained hand-counting before rejecting it as too costly, Travis County’s GOP resisted calls from both the county and Democrats in the county to make a final choice until this week. Instead of doing a full hand-count — which party leadership had publicly toyed with — they’ll count only mail-in ballots by hand.

There are still several questions left unanswered about how they’ll carry out this plan, and Travis County GOP did not respond to questions about whether they are concerned about potential delays and errors. In an email, party chair Matt Mackowiak said “we have a motivated group that will recruit the necessary workers. We are seeking to use existing state law to increase transparency and confidence in the election. That’s our goal.” .

Given Texas’s restrictive laws around who can legally cast a mailed ballot — mostly voters over the age of 65 and those casting absentee ballots — these ballots will make up only a fraction of primary ballots.

Nonetheless, experts say hand-counting even 1,000 mail-in ballots may be challenging to pull off.

“Depending on when they begin to process mail ballots, hand-counting might delay reporting final vote totals on election night,” said Stein.

The indecision and drama was largely new for Travis County. For years there, Democrats and Republicans have run a joint primary election, sharing the cost of contracting with the county to use its polling locations, equipment, and workers. The months of delays this year, Democrats say, brought their own planning to a standstill.

Katie Naranjo, Travis County Democratic Party Chair said that if Republicans move forward with their plan to hand-count ballots they’ll be tampering with their own election because of the potential delays and errors.

“Republicans have made their intent clear: to erode trust in our election process, and disenfranchise voters – not just Democratic voters, but Republican voters too,” she said in a statement. “While the joint primary contract today does not infringe upon Democrats’ right to hold our own primary election, the process and results of the Republican Primary are still very uncertain.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Arizona county again rejects proposal to hand-count ballots in 2024

2023-11-21T00:05:48+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

Mohave County supervisors for a second time Monday rejected a proposal to hand-count ballots cast in 2024 elections instead of using machines.

After two hours of impassioned public comments and debate quoting everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Yogi Berra, the five supervisors again rejected the proposal in a 3-2 vote, with each supervisor sticking to the position they took in a previous vote in August.

The vote of Supervisors Chairman Travis Lingenfelter, who voted no earlier this year, had seemed in play after he put the item back on the meeting agenda. During the meeting, he said he had done so in order to fulfill a promise to state Sen. Sonny Borrelli, a Republican who has been touring the state trying to convince county supervisors to eliminate tabulation machines.

“I said to Sonny Borrelli, if he covers the legal cost and guarantees the level of volunteers, that I will put it back on the agenda,” Lingenfelter said, before addressing Borrelli directly and adding, “my commitment is fulfilled to you.”

Supervisors Ron Gould and Hildy Angius voted in favor of hand-counting, and Jean Bishop, Buster Johnson, and Lingenfelter voted no, with Lingenfelter casting the final, tie-breaking vote.

Public comments ranged widely. One Kingman resident teared up Monday as she pleaded with Mohave County supervisors to agree to the hand count, asking them to consider how much they valued their freedom.

But another Mohave County resident told supervisors that hand-counting ballots would be a silly and expensive act of “pandering to the misinformed conspiracy theorists in your constituency to get yourselves reelected.”

For his part, Gould told the crowd he would be willing to go to jail so the county could hand-count its ballots.

Voting rights groups traveled to Mohave County to emphasize that hand-counting ballots is less accurate and less efficient than using ballot scanners and tabulator machines — and that it is illegal. If hand-counting ballots stretched past the county’s deadline to certify its election, as the elections director has estimated it would, it could potentially lead to the county’s voters being disenfranchised, they warned.

The northern Arizona county expects about 100,000 voters in the 2024 general election. The elections director previously estimated it would take 657 days to complete a hand count for that election. Hand-counting all 2024 elections, he said, would cost an additional $1.1 million at a time when the county faces an $18 million deficit.

Deputy County Attorney Ryan Esplin told the supervisors Monday that they did not have the authority under state law to hand count all ballots. If they moved forward, he said he would recommend to the county attorney that the office not represent the supervisors in resulting legal matters.

That would expose supervisors to personal liability for breaking state law and require them to obtain private counsel. The supervisors had received a letter from lawyer Bryan Blehm last week telling them that hand-counting the ballots was legal and “well within Mohave County’s rights,” and promising he would represent them if they were sued for moving forward. The costs, he said, would be covered by private donors, though he didn’t disclose anything about them.

But Attorney General Kris Mayes sent a letter to the supervisors on Sunday telling them that she was concerned that they had received incorrect legal advice from bad-faith actors attempting to create distrust in elections. “A ‘yes’ vote,” she said, “would direct your Elections Department to violate the law.”

“The resulting delays, inaccurate results, and illegal procedures from hand counts will then be used to call into doubt valid election results,” Mayes wrote. “The Board should not endorse this attack on the democratic process.”

Angius asked during the meeting who would be paying Blehm. Borrelli declined to say, or to offer additional details, but promised that private individuals, not organizations, would cover the cost.

Supervisor Jean Bishop pressed him on whether the money had already been set aside, asking, “Is it in an account? Is it in somebody’s shoe?”

The chairwoman of the Mohave County Republican Central Committee had written a Nov. 15 letter to the supervisors saying the party could provide more than 300 volunteers for hand counting. That led to a few residents questioning on Monday if Democrats would also be involved in the counting so that the process would be fair.

The supervisors heard from many residents repeating a grab bag of debunked lies about election security, including ballot-harvesting claims from elections conspiracy film “2000 Mules.” Maggie Passaro, the Kingman resident who teared up when speaking, brought up a false claim that the state’s tabulation machines weren’t properly accredited and certified before the 2020 election.

Others, though, spoke to the security of the county’s elections, including Glenda Erwin, who told the supervisors that she had volunteered to observe the early-voting process. “I observed democracy at its best,” she said.

Johnson said he didn’t know what the supervisors were trying to prove by hand-counting ballots when they had all agreed before that the county’s elections didn’t have problems.

Before voting yes, Gould said it seemed Mayes was “afraid” of them moving forward, suggesting without evidence that she had something to hide about the security of the state’s elections. He maintained his main concern is that people are losing faith in elections.

“That’s why I’m willing to do this,” he said. “That’s why I’m willing to risk that I’m going to get thrown in jail.”

In a statement released after the vote, Mayes said she was “relieved” by the supervisors decision not to move to the hand count.

“The Board’s decision to adhere to state-mandated procedures for ballot counting avoids potential legal complications and reinforces public trust in the integrity of our elections,” she wrote.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Mohave County supervisors to decide on hand-counting ballots in 2024

2023-11-17T20:21:24+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

Mohave County supervisors will vote Monday on whether to tally by hand all ballots cast in the county’s 2024 elections, including the November presidential election.

The supervisors, all Republicans, had previously considered hand-counting ballots but voted 3-2 against the idea in August after the county’s elections director conducted a trial and found it would cost around $1.1 million. The county is facing an $18 million budget deficit, and county supervisors cited that as a reason for rejecting the hand-count proposal.

Update: Arizona county again rejects proposal to hand-count ballots in 2024

One of the supervisors who voted no in August, Chairman Travis Lingenfelter, has now put the proposal back on the agenda for Monday’s supervisors meeting. If he switches his vote and no one else does, the hand count would move forward. He declined on Friday to speak with Votebeat until after Monday’s meeting.

The northern Arizona county expects about 100,000 voters in the 2024 general election. The elections director previously estimated it would take 657 days to complete a hand count for that election. Hand-counting ballots is known to be inaccurate, inefficient, and costly compared to using machines.

State Attorney General Kris Mayes issued an opinion in May stating that counting the ballots by hand rather than using machines would be illegal, and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes wrote Mohave supervisors a letter in June telling them the same thing. Both are Democrats. State law does not explicitly say all ballots must be counted by machines, but Fontes and others say other sections of law imply it.

The agenda item for Monday’s board meeting shows Mohave supervisors received a letter on Thursday from a lawyer, Bryan Blehm, telling them that it is legal and “well within Mohave County’s rights,” and promising that if supervisors are sued for doing so, he will represent the county “at no cost.”

“Any litigation will be 100% private pay,” Blehm wrote, though he didn’t disclose who would be paying him. Blehm represented the Cochise County supervisors in their attempted plan to hand-count all ballots in the November midterm as part of their audit, and he is the former attorney for Cyber Ninjas during the hand count of Maricopa County’s 2020 ballots.

Two of the Cochise County supervisors are now under criminal investigation by the Attorney General’s Office in the wake of the plan to hand count and a decision not to certify the midterm results on time.

The supervisors agenda shows the chairwoman of the Mohave County Republican Central Committee wrote a Nov. 15 letter to the supervisors saying the party could provide more than 300 volunteers for the counting.

Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson, who voted no in August, said in an interview Friday morning that he worries not just about the cost and legality of the move, but also the potential inaccuracy of the county’s results. Johnson also said volunteers won’t be reliable for this work.

Counties, he said, started using machines for a reason.

“Are we going to go back to the horse and buggy?” Johnson said.

The reconsideration comes after supervisors across the state have for months received pressure from Republican state Sens. Sonny Borrelli and Wendy Rogers to eliminate voting machines. The senators toured the state this summer telling the supervisors they believe the move would be legal. Nevertheless, no county has yet committed to do it.

In August, Deputy County Attorney Ryan Esplin told supervisors that his office “has concerns about the legality” of counting ballots by hand instead of using machines.

The Arizona Court of Appeals recently affirmed a lower court’s decision that hand-counting all ballots as part of the state’s prescribed post-election audit is illegal. Fontes told Votebeat in a recent interview he believes that ruling applies to the initial count of ballots as well.

Legality aside, Mohave County Elections Director Allen Tempert told the supervisors in August that the hand count would be impractical. He conducted a trial hand count of ballots and found that he would need to hire 250 people to count the general election by hand, and the counting would still stretch far past the deadlines for certifying the county’s election results.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

The drive to hand count ballots is growing. The GOP could stop it.

2023-10-16T09:00:00+00:00

A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

If you’ve noticed a lot of coverage of the movement to hand-count ballots lately, there’s a reason for that: This crusade is becoming a real problem.

Like a lot of movements that seek to reshape elections based on an extremist agenda (see the results of the ERIC conspiracy theories), the far-right push to abandon voting machines in favor of manually tallying votes has consequences. Usually, local consequences.

This is why I wrote an essay in the New York Times this week pointing out that voters in the most conservative parts of America are the very people who stand to be disenfranchised by the costly, laborious, logistically difficult practice of hand-counting ballots. You can read the article (un-paywalled) with this gift link.

And now, our fearless Texas reporter, Natalia Contreras, is out with yet another tale of a town torn asunder by a poorly conceived plan to hand count ballots. I didn’t mention Kerr County explicitly in my essay, but it’s one of the places I had in mind when I wrote this:

“Most local movements to hand-count ballots lose steam because, in most counties, there is enough diversity of political thought to create an opening for the introduction of facts. But where there is no pushback — in those reddest of red counties — some advocates for hand counting have managed to wreak havoc.”

Kerr County, where 75 percent of registered voters cast their ballot for Donald Trump in 2020, is the type of place you might think about when you think about the Texas Hill Country: a beautiful, green place of rolling hills and open land. It’s become attractive to the thousands of people who have moved to Texas from elsewhere, seeking salvation in a redder space.

There, a local Republican commissioner — who moved to the area from Ohio when he retired — is leading the charge. In the past several months, he’s held demonstrations that look more like pep rallies. One of them featured Tina Peters. Yes, that one.

So far, the stacked roster of enthusiastic events hasn’t worked. The rest of the commissioners, all Republican, have rejected Paces’ demands for hand counting.

But that doesn’t mean they’ve escaped the problems he’s caused.

The longtime election administrator, who runs the tax assessor’s office, refused to administer elections in the environment Paces created. The county then transferred election duties to the county clerk, who resigned her office entirely. Now, the county’s 40,000 voters will have their election managed by a person who’s never managed one. And it’s going to cost a lot of money to make that change.

And that’s the real risk, right? Hand counting is such a tremendously misguided idea that even counties that adopt it will eventually have to give it up, but along the way the systems they’ve spent decades building up will be destroyed. Here are some examples:

Cochise County, Arizona, which had its elections director quit before suing the county for hostile workplace conditions. They paid her $130,000. Her replacement recently left as well, citing the impossible nature of his job.
Nye County, Nevada, where a local elected official led dozens of volunteers in a hand-counting exercise that they never completed. After the first day, he estimated one fourth of the ballots had been miscounted.
Shasta County, California, where hand-counting plans are ongoing despite the state legislature recently making it illegal in response to this county’s efforts. The county has spent millions canceling a Dominion contract, getting new machines, and expanding office space and staff to make room for the move. They will likely never hand count a ballot.

In Shasta County, Cathy Darling-Allen, who has served as county clerk since 2004, has consistently spoken out against the plan to hand count ballots there. But as the only countywide elected Democrat, she’s easy to ignore.

Here’s who is not easy to ignore: these activists’ fellow Republicans.

One of the most eye-opening reactions I’ve seen to Votebeat’s coverage of the hand-counting movement was from a county GOP treasurer in Toombs County, Georgia. Abe Glaser and other local Republicans, suspicious of cheating in 2020, had been exploring a move to hand counting ballots in their county. When he reached out to his local state representative to advocate for the practice, she showed him an article I’d written — a rundown of why hand counting leads to such problematic outcomes.

“Your article convinced me that hand counting is out of the question,” he emailed me.

This summer, he quoted large chunks of the article in his own blog. “Before I looked into this subject, I was all for going back to paper ballots. I thought hand counting with supervision from all political parties would make for fair and legal elections,” he wrote. “Huseman’s logic is hard to refute.”

Across the country, these efforts are belying the party’s core beliefs in small government and low taxes. They are also tearing apart elections departments that previously functioned well and had earned the trust of local voters. Now, the GOP risks the very real chance of disenfranchising voters in their most diehard counties.

What happens next is up to them.

Back Then

For this week’s history, a pretty good argument for machines that has nothing to do with budgets and timing: It made people in Kentucky stop shooting each other. Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams takes it from here:

Kentucky voters changed our state Constitution in 1940 to allow machine counting of ballots. These articles highlight why.

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

#NationalVoterEducationWeek pic.twitter.com/q8J10umqU2
— Michael Adams, KY Sec of State (@KYSecState) October 7, 2022

New From Votebeat

From Votebeat Texas: Push to hand count ballots throws a Texas county’s election administration into chaos

From Votebeat Arizona: Three seconds to spot fraud? Here’s what I found testing Arizona’s ballot signature checking process.

From Votebeat Pennsylvania: Effort to move Pa.’s 2024 primary date appears to be dead due to legislative impasse

In Other Voting News

The Republican National Committee has announced it will recruit on-the-ground “election integrity directors” along with tens of thousands of poll workers for 2024. RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel says the goal is to “hold Democrats accountable for bad laws that make voting less secure,” Axios reports.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week on a Republican-drawn map in South Carolina that was overturned by a lower court for being racially discriminatory. Court watchers speculate that the conservative justices seem poised to reinstate the map, which moved 30,000 Black voters out of a congressional district.
In Texas, a federal judge ruled that Galveston County’s most recent map for commissioner districts marginalized Black and Latino voters in their representation on the Commissioners Court, in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The county plans to appeal to the Fifth Circuit. Read the full story at the Texas Tribune.
Two Democratic groups in North Carolina filed suit this week against Senate bill 747 only hours after it went into effect. They are seeking most immediate relief as it relates to changes the law made to same day voter registration. Under the new law — which had been vetoed by the state’s Democratic governor before his veto was overridden by the GOP-dominated legislature— those registering to vote on election day will be required to bring additional forms of identification. Their ballots can be canceled if they do not submit this information in time, Politico reports.
It’s that time of year, I guess, so here’s some more court news: This week a federal judge in Georgia declined to block voting restrictions that have come as a result of SB 202, a sweeping voting bill passed after the 2020 election. Read more at Courthouse News.
The Alabama Reflector is out with an in-depth look on Alabama’s proposed replacement to ERIC, which the secretary of state has dubbed “AVID.”
And, finally, look out folks — voting is happening. NOLA.com has a great photo series on the bustling election workers rolling out voting machines and putting up polling locations in New Orleans for today’s gubernatorial primary.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Push to hand count ballots throws a Texas county’s election administration into chaos

2023-10-13T09:58:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

Responsibility for running elections in Kerr County has shifted among three different people in the past two months. The first two officials bailed on the job after a months-long effort by one Republican county official to rid the county of electronic voting equipment and begin hand counting all ballots. The push has divided the overwhelmingly Republican county — a verdant stretch of the Hill Country split by the Guadalupe River — and will cost taxpayers around $250,000 due to the many changeovers.

So far, the effort has failed. Still, Kerr County Republican Party Chair Paul Zohlen told Votebeat the effort — led largely by Republican County Commissioner Rich Paces — has “single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to one of the finest election departments in the state.”

“This had never happened before,” Zohlen said. “And now the county clerk will have to put together a team and impart the 10 to 15 years of experience they need by March of 2024.”

Until late August, elections in Kerr County, home to Kerrville and with a population of more than 50,000 people, were managed by the tax assessor’s office. Bob Reeves, a Republican elected to the role in 2018, told Votebeat he refused to continue the work because of the growing distrust in elections there, which made an already time-consuming, stressful, and low-paying job nearly impossible.

“I was put between a proverbial rock and a hard place,” Reeves said. The recent demands for hand counting stemming from baseless suspicions about the security of the current system, he said, made the work seem hopeless.

The duties, therefore, were transferred to Jackie Dowdy, the county clerk. She, too, refused and resigned her position entirely. Her chief deputy, Ian Collum, was appointed as interim clerk while the county conducts the search for her replacement. He and others in that department, which has not handled elections in more than a decade, will now be placed in charge of helping Kerr County’s 40,000 registered voters cast their ballots in 2024.

Fueled by misinformation and baseless claims that electronic voting equipment is manipulated to change election results, the push to hand count ballots in Kerr County is similar to other efforts happening across Texas and elsewhere. Communities that have recently embraced hand counting of ballots — a method that election administration experts have said and studies have shown is less accurate, more costly, and less secure — have become hotly divided. In some cases, such as Cochise County, Arizona, it has pushed election officials out of their jobs and fractured trust in local elections.

Experts told Votebeat it may take years to undo the chaos and to restore the erosion of trust in elections that the effort to hand count has created in Kerr and elsewhere.

“These communities are spending an incredible amount of time trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. And as a result, creating a whole series of new very real problems,” said Justin Grimmer, a professor in the department of political science and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who is currently conducting research on efforts to hand count ballots in counties across the country.

Only a small handful of counties in Texas — all with populations of fewer than 10,000 residents — hand count their election results. In West Texas’ Glasscock County, which has fewer than 800 registered voters, it made little sense to buy expensive equipment for a job that could easily be done by hand, for example. Their small numbers and short ballots allow these counties to complete and submit vote totals within 24 hours of the polls closing on Election Day.

Right now, the effort to hand count ballots in Kerr County has reached a stopping point. This fall, a vote to change the county’s counting process ahead of 2024 failed. But neither Paces nor county election officials believe this fight is over.

“This was just the first skirmish,” Paces told Votebeat.

Officials reach a breaking point

Behind a counter of clerks who help residents update their vehicle registration, their property taxes, file paperwork for various licenses and update their voter registration is Bob Reeves’ small office. It’s often hard to see the surface of his desk, covered as it is in stacks of paperwork. The bookcase behind him holds even more stacks — reflecting the amount of work Reeves has had to handle as the county’s tax assessor and election official, with multiple, back-to-back state-mandated deadlines he has to meet to fulfill both roles.

Reeves said that over the years he and his staff knew of some in the community with questions or perhaps a general distrust of the elections process. “But we always tried to the best of our ability to help people understand,” he said.

Defending the process, and his job, however, became a lot more difficult when the distrust came from someone like Paces, a man seated at the commissioners’ court dais.

In the past eight months, Reeves kept finding himself constantly having to pull away from the stacks of motor vehicle registration, property tax and elections paperwork he had to complete in order to prepare for the next commissioners court meeting where the voting equipment he uses would be questioned — often without regard for facts.

The prospect of hand counting put Reeves, he told Votebeat, in what he perceived to be legal jeopardy. If the county were sued over the results of a future election, or if a lawsuit questioned the accuracy of hand counting, he would not be able to defend the practice in a courtroom. He also had no confidence that hand counting could be done in the time set under law, which requires counties to report results 24 hours after polls close. He also would not be able to explain why commissioners disagreed on whether to trust electronic vote-counting equipment even though he says he has confidence in the machines.

“Without their unanimous support I could not do my job properly,” Reeves told Votebeat after he resigned his election duties in August. By law, unless the county creates an elections department and appoints an elections administrator, the county clerk must serve as the county elections officer. The Texas Election Code allows the county commissioners, however, to transfer the election administration duties from the clerk to the tax-assessor collector, if needed – and if both departments are in agreement — which Kerr County did in 2008.

Kerr County tax assessor-collector Bob Reeves sits in his office located inside the Kerr County Courthouse and goes over local election procedures on Sept. 11, 2023.

Jackie Dowdy, the county clerk who resigned in September, did not respond to Votebeat’s requests for comment about the reason behind her resignation. During a public meeting two weeks after Reeves announced he’d relinquish his duties, Dowdy appeared frustrated about the last-minute change to her department and said Reeves never reached out to her about his decision.

Under the transition plan for elections, Reeve’s office will continue to handle voter registration duties and only one of Reeves’ staffers would move over to Dowdy’s former department. “Having only one position move means I’ll only have one experienced person and that is not good,” Dowdy told the commissioners, requesting three additional staff members. “This is also going to affect the entire staff. I need space, I need desks, desktop computers, so, it’s an expense.”

The estimated cost the commissioners budgeted for such expenses comes to around $250,000, which will be borne by Kerr County taxpayers.

How the hand-count movement came to Kerr County

Paces ran for his seat on the Kerr County Commissioners Court last year with a campaign focused on frugal spending and election integrity. An Ohio native and retired engineer, Paces and his wife moved to the Texas Hill Country in the early 2000s.

After being on the job for less than a month, he began to receive text messages from local right-wing activist Alicia Bell, who said she was at the Capitol for an “election integrity legislative briefing.” The event featured Bob Hall, a Dallas-area senator who has for years pushed to eliminate electronic voting equipment; Texas GOP Vice Chair Dana Myers, who led efforts to remove Texas from an effective voter list maintenance tool; and Russ Ramsland, a Texas businessman who is widely known to spread false election conspiracies.

“Can you put voting on the agenda?” Bell asked Paces via text message, according to records obtained by the news outlet the Kerr County Lead and shared with Votebeat. “The whole presentation was jaw dropping.” Bell has been a thorn in the side of Kerr County government since she moved to the area from California. She’s a frequent speaker at commissioners court meetings who has denied that the COVID-19 pandemic is real and is against vaccine mandates.

“We are here to govern the local community. We’re not here to listen to what’s on the internet, or what’s on Fox News,” Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly — who declined Votebeat’s multiple requests for comment on this story — told Bell in 2021 after she claimed doctors were trying to scare the public by inflating positive cases of COVID-19. “I know you’re new from California, and you don’t understand how Texas local government works. We’re required to abide by and follow the law.”

Less than a month after Bell sent Paces that text message, in February, he added the topic of elections as an item on the commissioners court agenda. He proposed hosting an election integrity workshop, where the public and the other county commissioners could hear from “experts’’ first-hand.

The commissioners agreed to host the workshop, and the first took place in March at the county commissioners court. Reeves was asked to be on hand to explain the relevant laws and existing procedures, and a representative from Texas-based election machine vendor Hart Intercivic went over the company’s security features that protect voting machines from tampering. Then, Paces brought on Mark Cook, an election conspiracy theorist and self-described IT expert from Colorado who has for months without success tried to persuade Texas counties to get rid of their voting equipment while driving a branded RV from county to county. He’s been to Uvalde, Nueces, Bexar, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Denton and Gillespie Counties, among others, where county leaders and election officials have rejected his proposals.

Days after the event, Paces traveled to Waco for former president Donald Trump’s first 2024 presidential campaign rally.

Kerr County Commissioner Rich Paces, speaks to a crowd at an Election Integrity Town Hall he hosted at the Hill Country Youth Event Center on Aug. 22, 2023.

Meanwhile, Reeves tried other ways to show Paces and the other commissioners that hand-counting the ballots of the county’s more than 38,000 registered voters would not be feasible. With the help of county workers, Reeves tested how long it would take to count 100 ballots from Kerr County’s March 2020 Republican primary: “With fresh eyes, it took an hour to count 32 ballots,” Reeves said.

He also warned that the county already struggles to find enough election workers and the facilities for the 20 polling locations for each election. In order to hand count, the county would likely need to double the number of poll workers, the funds to pay them and larger spaces to conduct hand counts based on the number of ballots. “That’s more than 200 people that we’d need to work nonstop,” Reeves said.

None of the evidence Reeves or others showed to Paces changed his mind.

Right-wing celebrities draw a crowd

The records shared with Votebeat show that activists from local far-right political action committee We The People and other voter fraud activists from neighboring counties have helped drive this momentum. He also had the help of national names in the “election integrity” movement, such as Seth Keshel, that has grown out of the lies about the outcome of the 2020 election.

In August, around 300 people showed up to an Election Integrity Town Hall that Paces organized, packing the expo hall at the county’s fairgrounds in Kerrville. The event lasted nearly six hours.

Many were there to see Tina Peters, the former Mesa County Colorado clerk who was indicted last year on felony and misdemeanor charges related to election equipment tampering after she allowed unauthorized people break into her county’s election system in hopes of finding evidence of fraud. As she walked in, Peters received a standing ovation from the crowd of mostly senior citizens. The crowd fell silent when she took the stage, listening as she explained why the voting machines and government officials — including those who arrested her — could not be trusted. She also denied any wrongdoing on her part related to criminal charges against her, and provided no evidence that Kerr County’s elections were flawed.

“These are Democrats and Republicans, Marxists and globalists who want to take your country,” Peters said before promoting her website, her live streamed video show and an upcoming documentary about her. “They put the people in [office] that they want. They are selected, not elected.”

Other speakers included Keshel, Hall, and Cook, who is connected to self-proclaimed “election integrity” groups across the country, and to clerks who have tried to illegally obtain access to voting systems. He described hand counting as a type of salvation for towns seeking to boost election confidence.

Cook told the crowd that government and election officials are using electronic voting equipment to tally votes because “they think we, the citizens, the peasants are too dumb to count their own votes. Not anymore,” Cook said. The crowd cheered, with a handful of onlookers shouting “Amen!”

Records show Paces arranged travel and personally paid expenses for Peters and Cook. Both stayed as guests in his home east of the county.

In September, he formally proposed the county hand count ballots for the upcoming November general election.

Mark Cook, an election conspiracy theorist and self-described IT and cybersecurity expert from Colorado speaks to a crowd at an Election Integrity Town Hall in Kerrville on Aug. 22, 2023.

The vote failed to move forward after no other commissioners, also all Republicans, would second the motion. Its failure, though, was not indicative of a lack of enthusiasm in the county — the room was filled to capacity, and more waited outside the room in order to be heard on the measure.

Most of those who showed up to speak were Republicans — 75% of the county voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020. They were divided by the prospect of hand counting ballots.

Bill Ragsdale, a Kerr County justice of the peace, reminded those present that hand counting will slow the process tremendously, potentially impacting the entire state of Texas. In the 80s, he said, he assisted during an election where “Kerr County held up the entire state’s election for three days because we were hand-counting,” he said. “[Counters] worked all night long, through the next day and through the next day to try and count all the votes. Know how accurate that count was? I don’t know. We were all ready for it to be over.”

For those in favor of hand counting, objections about cost and time didn’t make much of a difference. “There is no trust right now in our current system and we need to fix that,” said Roger Hall, a resident of Ingram who told the crowd he was in favor of hand counting and did not trust voting machines. “That’s what a lot of people here today are here for.”

Paces has also taken this show on the road.

In Medina County, a small county two hours south of Kerr County, he and Cook took the stage days after his August event in Kerr, to advocate they, too, take up hand counting. Paces, who has never worked an election, led a group of people to demonstrate how a hand count would be done. Four people sat around a table and pulled out ballots from cardboard bankers boxes and started tallying.

Paces encouraged those who attended the demonstration to gather around the table to see how it’s done up close. “You’ll see this is very transparent,” he told the crowd and reassured them the counting would be done quickly.

“My plan is to have people come in to start counting ballots at 2 in the afternoon. Five hours worth. You’re done by the time the polls close. It’s a matter of getting enough people,” he said.

It’s not clear what Paces’ next move is, though he told Votebeat he is committed to enacting this change, regardless of the damage it does to the county. He rejects the assertion that hand counting would cost more money and take substantially more time with less confidence in the final results, despite having no supporting evidence to offer. He says he’d gotten hundreds of people signed up to volunteer to hand count in Kerr.

“And more people are calling me and telling me, ‘hey, sorry it didn’t work, but I’ll hand count, put me on the list,’ and more will come forward,” Paces said. “It’s almost like a movement of civic pride, and that’s great.”

Correction, Oct. 13, 2023: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the Kerr County deputy clerk. His name is Ian Collum.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Activists for hand-counting ballots don’t acknowledge drawbacks: More mistakes, time, and money

2023-07-24T15:47:52+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Despite widespread coverage of the follies of hand-counting ballots, the quest to expand use of the method continues. This year alone, there have been 16 bills in 8 states that would ban the use of tabulators. It’s a really bad idea. And so, Votebeat has decided to compile a list of our favorite cold-hard evidence.

I’m sure many of you already understand the broad strokes of this: years of evidence and basic common sense shows that hand-counting is less accurate, more time consuming, and significantly more expensive than using tabulators. Still, the same arguments continue to motivate local officials and activists to attempt to upend elections systems. Let’s go through them here, point by point.

Hand-counting is not a simple, straightforward task like advocates claim.

As you might have noticed from any of our coverage, election work is tedious. And it should be — election administrators are tasked with the weighty responsibility of counting ballots accurately and keeping them safe. This is central to democracy, but it is also a massive and carefully orchestrated logistical challenge.

Because the checks and seals and numbering of batches of ballots goes unseen by the vast majority of voters, it’s easy to believe hand-counting is straightforward. You just count the ballots, right? Nope.

Federal and state laws exist related to the treatment and organization and storage of ballots. Hand-counting processes, therefore, have to ensure that each ballot is properly stored in its correct location. Multiple people would have to work together if a voter’s selection was unclear to determine their intent, and write-in candidates are tabulated. Then, all of the ballots are returned to their appropriate batch.

Imagine inviting an entire city to a party, and then as you get the RSVPs you must keep them — by law — in order. And as you tally the RSVPs, you have to individually hand-tally 60 different food choices you’ve asked your guests to make. You have to do this repeatedly, 1,200 different times. Dozens of others you’ve recruited for the task have the same work ahead of them. How accurate do you think your guest list would be? Would the responses be organized when you finished?

If you play that out in your head, you’ll realize a few things: To accomplish this you’d need a lot of people, a lot of time, and a lot of space. All of those people would also have to understand all of the tricky little details that are required to keep this process accurate. All of this costs money.

That’s a lot of work, and a lot of steps that are easy to mess up.

For example, the Audit Guys — a group of election experts who reviewed Cyber Ninjas’ work and findings — wrote this of the hundreds of volunteers Cyber Ninjas recruited to hand-count all of Maricopa County’s ballots from the presidential election in 2020: “Sometimes they counted ballots by 50, sometimes by 100, sometimes they marked how many ballots were seen, other times they didn’t, sometimes they included subtotals, sometimes they didn’t, sometimes the errors were detected and corrected, sometimes they weren’t.”

Chaos.

Just because other countries hand-count ballots doesn’t mean it is feasible in the United States.

A popular argument from hand-counters is that if France hand counts its entire election in a single evening, why can’t we? Well, because of a lot of really simple-to-understand reasons.

France — which is one-fifth the population of the U.S. — has simpler ballots because they count one race. The United States counts pages of races at once, mashing together local, state, and federal choices onto one ballot. As a result of our diffuse federal system, our ballots are the longest of any democracy.

Still, hand-counting is less efficient in the United States even when the act is limited to a single race. For example, the recount ordered by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in 2020 was for the presidential election only, arguably similar to the hand counts done in France. This statewide effort amounted to the largest hand recount in U.S. history. It cost counties hundreds of thousands of dollars and took multiple days.

Do the math for yourself: If it took that long and cost that much to count one race, how much do you think it would cost to count more than 60 races by hand? That’s how many choices the residents of Fulton County, home of Atlanta, had to make in 2020.

In Cobb County — a suburban county north of Atlanta — the effort took five days and hundreds of volunteers. The administrator there estimated it would take 100 days to have counted the entire ballot in that same way.

There are some really good academic studies on errors made in hand counting.

The studies conclude these efforts are far more error-prone than counts using tabulators.

First, two political scientists — Stephen Ansolabehere and Andrew Reeves — compared the differences between the original count and the recount of several jurisdictions in New Hampshire. Some hand-counted ballots, and others used scanners. Ansolabehere and Reeves found that the difference between the recount and the original count was twice as large when hand-counted compared to when the ballots were tabulated by a scanner.

Then, in Wisconsin, Profs. Ansolabehere, Charles Stewart, Barry Burden, and Kenneth Mayer did a similar comparison using original counts and two statewide races — one state Supreme Court race in 2011, and the 2016 presidential election. In 2011, hand-counted ballots were off about twice as much as scanned ballots. In 2016, error rates for hand-counted ballots were one-third higher than scanned ones, though in all cases, they were small.

By 2016, though, error rates for both hand-counting and scanned ballots had gone down dramatically from the previous study in 2011. Stewart writes the improvement across the board was most likely the result of drastically better practices in the wake of the 2000 election, but notes, “both hand counting and scanners can be very accurate, but scanners are better.”

Regardless of the underlying technology that allows hand counting to be organized and finalized, “when rare, large discrepancies do arise, they occur because of poll workers’ decisions, such as stopping counting because they were tired or not counting write-in ballots considered irrelevant,” writes Stewart.

Scanners don’t get tired, and they can’t decide a write-in is irrelevant.

Another study from Rice University examined how human beings did when given 120 ballots to hand-count. Here, instead of one race, humans were asked to count the results of two races. Humans got the results wrong more than 30% of the time.

Ultimately, you don’t have to rely on theories or even studies to see with your own eyes how bad of an idea this is.

In Nye County, Nev., for example, a local commissioner attempted to reject the machine-counted ballots of his county’s 20,000 voters before ultimately agreeing to do a “parallel” hand count. It was performed by 170 volunteers working irregular hours and — because of difficulty in recruitment — did not follow bipartisan volunteer pairings as required by law. After the first day, the clerk who’d advocated for the whole thing estimated volunteers miscounted one-fourth of ballots.

Or, Arizona! After being hired by the Arizona Senate, Cyber Ninjas tried multiple times over three months in 2021 to count the 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County’s 2020 election — using rotating tables to spin ballots, paper-counting machines, and spreadsheets. But texts from CEO Doug Logan released this summer show that they ultimately couldn’t make sense of their own numbers, and Logan admitted the numbers were “screwy.”

Cyber Ninjas’ final report confirmed Biden’s win and claimed that their hand-counting results were only hundreds off from the county’s results. But The Audit Guys analyzed the Cyber Ninjas data, comparing it with the county’s official record of votes cast, and found that the Ninjas failed to accurately count both ballots and votes cast. In one example, in which they analyzed the count of about 4,000 ballots, they found that counters awarded 12.4% more votes to Donald Trump than were included in the official results.

Please stop making elections worse by pretending hand counting is a good idea.

Not only is it inefficient, costly, and time consuming, it ensures that the ballots that need the most attention are given short shrift: The more time it takes to count ballots, the less time you have to resolve smudged marks, difficult-to-read write-in candidates, process provisional ballots and so on. These are simply a reality in elections.

As the studies and real world examples above show, it is in our best interest to let tabulators be tabulators and humans be humans.

Let computers do the repetitive work on standard ballots, and humans do the work to adjudicate unclear ballots and write-in candidates, so that every ballot truly does get counted accurately and with the best resources available.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Activists for hand-counting ballots don’t acknowledge drawbacks: More mistakes, time, and money

2023-07-24T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Hand-counting is not a simple, straightforward task like advocates claim.

That’s a lot of work, and a lot of steps that are easy to mess up.

Chaos.

Just because other countries hand-count ballots doesn’t mean it is feasible in the United States.

A popular argument from hand-counters is that if France hand counts its entire election in a single evening, why can’t we? Well, because of a lot of really simple-to-understand reasons.

There are some really good academic studies on errors made in hand counting.

The studies conclude these efforts are far more error-prone than counts using tabulators.

Scanners don’t get tired, and they can’t decide a write-in is irrelevant.

Ultimately, you don’t have to rely on theories or even studies to see with your own eyes how bad of an idea this is.

Please stop making elections worse by pretending hand counting is a good idea.

As the studies and real world examples above show, it is in our best interest to let tabulators be tabulators and humans be humans.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

As push for hand-counting ballots continues in Arizona, Republican senators emphasize legality, not practicality

2023-07-19T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

As they tour the state to try to convince county decision-makers to hand-count ballots in the upcoming presidential election, Republican lawmakers in Arizona are emphasizing one point: They believe it’s legal here.

“Once again, you aren’t mandated to use machines,” state Sen. Sonny Borrelli told the three Republican supervisors in Gila County last week. “Hand count, paper ballot. I’m open for questions.”

Borrelli and state Sen. Wendy Rogers, both Republicans, told Mohave County’s board the same thing last month. So far, supervisors have been reluctant. In Mohave, which spans the northwest corner of the state and includes Kingman, supervisors launched a trial to study the resources hand-counting would take, and in Gila, the mountainous county east of Phoenix, they politely said they might consider the idea at a future meeting.

This marks the latest in a series of attempts from GOP activists to use a lack of specificity in state law to challenge time-tested procedures and create doubts about the accuracy of elections. Other such efforts, eventually blocked by the courts, include attempts to end mail-in voting and stop the certification of midterm results.

But the pitch that hand-counting ballots might be legal is making the idea, currently popular among Republican voters skeptical of the security of machines, harder to reject. If a county moves forward, there will certainly be a court battle at taxpayer expense.

Meanwhile, the debate over legality is pulling attention from the well-known problems that crop up when trying to hand-count ballots, an especially challenging task in a presidential election with dozens of contests on each ballot and high turnout.

“This whole idea of a hand count is a total red herring,” said Democratic attorney Tom Ryan. “Time and time again, science has proven that the idea that hand counts are more accurate than tabulators is just a myth.”

Study after study has found that hand-counting ballots is far less accurate and efficient than counting with machines, which are simply better than people at tasks such as repetitive tallying. Arizona’s ballot is notoriously long, adding to the challenge. As counties already struggle to find election workers, it’s unclear how they would find the dozens or hundreds of bipartisan teams needed for the task. In addition, hand-counting takes time, which has the potential to delay election results.

On the legal question, Borrelli may be right that nothing in Arizona’s election statute nor its Elections Procedures Manual, which has the force of law, specifies that ballots cast in all elections must be counted by machines, according to several election law attorneys. The Arizona Legislative Council, the legal research arm of the legislature, wrote last year that nothing in the law “specifically requires a county to use electronic tabulating equipment or prohibits a county from hand counting all its ballots.”

Still, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, along with many election attorneys, believe it’s illegal based on other sections of law.

Former state elections director and Republican attorney Eric Spencer pointed at many provisions, such as the section of the manual that states that counties can only conduct a “manual” count of ballots “if it becomes impracticable to count all or some of the ballots with tabulating equipment.” One example of when it may be impracticable, attorney Tom Ryan said, is if a small jurisdiction, such as a school district, is conducting its own election with limited races and a small number of ballots cast.

As Fontes, a Democrat, rewrites the Elections Procedures Manual this summer, he has the chance to be more specific about when counties must use machines and when they may hand count ballots. It’s unclear whether he will.

Fontes sent Mohave County supervisors a letter last month as they considered whether to consider hand counting, warning him that he believed they would be breaking both federal and state laws if they did and asking them to “consider the negative consequences to election systems, voters and taxpayers that would result from the introduction of election procedures which are untested and have no legal basis.”

But Borrelli told the Mohave supervisors not to be discouraged by a potential lawsuit. “If they want to sue, then bring it on, because I have an army behind me that is ready to fight,” Borrelli said, standing in front of residents in a crowded boardroom.

Laws on the topic vary across the country, and counties in other states are feeling pressure as well. In Texas, a Republican group is traveling across the state in what they are calling a “hand count road show,” demonstrating a method of hand-counting they feel would provide transparency – one that raises numerous questions as to how the results would be tallied and verified.

Fontes points to case law and federal law

Borrelli told Gila supervisors that he has recently spoken with county attorneys in the state and when they have told him the law doesn’t specifically allow for a hand count, he has pointed out that it doesn’t specifically prohibit it, either.

In Mohave, Borrelli said that “the media and other supervisors in other counties want to lead people on to believe that myth.”

Spencer, the former state elections director, believes the language in state statute and the Elections Procedures Manual makes it fairly clear that machines must be used. Along with the line in the manual about hand counting only when machine counting “becomes impracticable,” a line in state statute implies all ballots will be “automatically” counted.

In Fontes’ letter, he cites case law that explains county supervisors have only those powers “expressly conferred by statute,” and cannot act outside of those. He also wrote that, under federal law, the state must follow the plan it’s outlined for using secure voting systems under the Help America Vote Act.

There are also no processes for how hand counting should work. That could lead to lack of proper ballot tracking and security, Fontes wrote. And the long timeline for counting, he wrote, could threaten the county’s ability to “timely canvass election results within 20 days of the election, as required by state law.”

But Republican attorney and state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, of Scottsdale, disagrees, saying that a few sections of statute and the manual imply that it’s a choice whether to use machines, including a line that says rules “apply to all elections where tabulating devices are used,” and another that provides a rule for any election “in which the votes are cast on an electronic voting machine or tabulator.”

Cochise County case reviews hand-counting topic

Kolodin believes the state’s law not only allows counties to hand-count all ballots for the initial count of ballots, but also during the partial hand count audit of ballots that comes after the initial count and has a specific process dictated by state law. He represented Cochise County supervisors in oral arguments on Tuesday as they appealed a November decision from a trial court that said they did not have the right to move forward with a full hand-count audit.

While that case addresses only how many ballots counties can hand-count during the audit, appellate court judges on Tuesday also wanted to hear opinions on whether machines can be scrapped altogether for the initial count. Judge Peter Eckerstrom implied it would be nice for counties to have clear direction prior to the presidential election.

“Aren’t elections the kind of thing you really want prospective clarity on?” he asked. “And no ambiguity on? And wouldn’t a published opinion from the Court of Appeals and perhaps ultimately from the Supreme Court, no matter which way it goes, provide necessary clarity, so our boards of supervisors and our elections officials going into the next election know exactly what they can and can’t do?”

Judge Michael Kelly said it’s unclear how many counties could be interested in hand-counting ballots in 2024.

Rogers told supervisors in Gila and Mohave that they will be seen as heroes if they choose to hand count instead of using machines, comparing them to soldiers at war.

Along with Gila and Mohave, supervisors in Cochise and Pinal counties have said they want to explore what it would take to hand count ballots, with Pinal starting but then aborting a trial.

Other places have already tried hand-counting ballots, and have found it difficult to get accurate results, in addition to taking longer than expected. The most significant example of that was in Arizona, when Cyber Ninjas attempted to hand count the 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County’s 2020 election - but it took more than 100 workers months, millions of dollars, and they couldn’t get it right after multiple attempts.

Gila County Supervisor Steve Christensen told Votebeat he is interested in trying to improve voter confidence. He isn’t sure if hand-counting will do that, he said, and most important to him is not the method - but getting the results right.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

As northern Arizona county makes ballot hand-count plan, Secretary of State steps in

2023-06-07T02:03:13+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

A day after supervisors in a northwestern Arizona county voted to request a plan to hand-count ballots in the 2024 presidential election, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes sent a letter to Mohave County supervisors on Tuesday telling them he is concerned that moving forward would break state and federal laws, potentially be insecure, and would lead to inaccurate results.

“Hand counting ballots is incredibly prone to human error, which results in a time-intensive process to arrive at correct, final results,” Fontes, a Democrat, wrote. “However, even assuming correct and final results, state law does not allow county boards … to unilaterally substitute a hand count for certified and tested electronic tabulation equipment.”

The vote Monday by Republican supervisors was nearly unanimous, with one supervisor, Jean Bishop, voting no. It ordered the county’s elections director to come up with a plan to count all votes on ballots cast in the upcoming presidential election by hand.

In a statement to Votebeat shortly after he sent the letter to the supervisors, Fontes wrote that he’s concerned “any plan to initiate a full hand count of ballots for a future election would put [county election] officials in serious legal jeopardy, including possible criminal liability, for violations of state law.”

“I urge any county official to consider the negative consequences to election systems, voters and taxpayers that would result from the introduction of election procedures which are untested and have no legal basis,” he wrote.

In response, Supervisors Chairman Travis Lingenfelter wrote to Fontes that it was an “interesting letter and duly noted.”

“Thank you for your concern for Mohave County’s well-being,” he wrote. “I’d like to share that Mohave County has its own County Attorney’s Office, it’s own professional Elections Director and staff, and working closely with them our Board sees no harm done in fully assessing, evaluating, and understanding the total estimated expense and time that such an endeavor as was discussed yesterday would involve.”

Fontes’ office learned of the supervisors’ vote after Votebeat reached out for comment on Monday, according to a spokesperson.

The Mohave supervisors are just the latest in Arizona to consider hand-counting ballots as some GOP leaders and residents continue to call for the ban of ballot tabulation machines across the state, following false claims of vote switching in 2020. Pinal County’s election director is currently conducting a trial hand-count of test ballots at the direction of the county supervisors. Cochise County supervisors have said they remain interested in the idea despite a court blocking their hand-count audit plan last November.

Mohave supervisors’ vote followed impassioned speeches from two Republican state senators, Sonny Borrelli, who represents the county, and Wendy Rogers, who represents another part of northern Arizona. The senators pressured the supervisors to hand-count ballots, telling them that the rest of the state is counting on them to lead.

“I don’t know if you ladies and gentlemen realize, but in this room right now is a real historic opportunity,” Rogers said.

Borrelli, the Senate’s majority leader, sent a letter last month to supervisors in all of the state’s 15 counties falsely stating that a non-binding Senate resolution the Legislature passed earlier this year prevents counties from using their tabulation machines in the 2024 election. He sent it on his own, and a Senate Republican spokesperson said the Senate leadership team disagreed with it.

Borrelli downplayed that letter on Monday, saying “it seemed pretty heavy-handed, but that wasn’t the intent,” and instead asserting that the counties didn’t need a resolution or law to allow them to hand-count, because state law doesn’t prohibit it.

“The media and other supervisors in other counties want to lead people on to believe that myth,” he said. “It’s not a mandate, you don’t have to use the equipment.”

Fontes’ letter says otherwise. He cites case law that explains that county supervisors have only those powers “expressly conferred by statute,” and cannot act outside of those powers. He also wrote that, under federal law, the state must follow the plan it’s outlined for using secure voting systems under the Help America Vote Act.

In addition to the legal concerns, Fontes wrote that hand counting would not have the same strict processes and procedures machine counting does, that ensures “integrity, accuracy and security.”

“This lack of accountability could result in significant human error,” he wrote.

Borrelli told the supervisors he believed they would be sued if they move forward.

“If they want to sue, then bring it on, because I have an army behind me that is ready to fight,” he said.

Mohave’s proposed plan would differ from the Cochise County plan that was blocked by a judge in November. Cochise’s plan was to still tabulate ballots by machine for the initial count, but then to hand-count all ballots as part of the statutorily-required hand-count audit that allows counties to only count a small, random sampling of early and Election Day ballots.

Supervisor Buster Johnson told Votebeat that Fontes’ letter wasn’t surprising. He’s not in support of the hand-count, he said, which is why he wanted to specify the vote wasn’t to approve the hand count but to approve studying what it would take.

“Hopefully the board will come to the correct decision once they move ahead,” he said.

Bishop, the only supervisor to vote no, told Votebeat that she thinks it’s a waste of time and resources to make the plan.

“I think this is all just political baloney.”

The Mohave supervisors voted to hand-count ballots even after their own elections director explained to them, in detail, why it wouldn’t work.

Allen Tempert, who has been the county’s elections director for more than two decades, told the supervisors hand counting is extremely difficult to do accurately, would take weeks, and would be extraordinarily costly. Election experts and numerous studies have also found hand-counting ballots to be far less accurate and less efficient.

Tempert told supervisors he can’t even get enough poll workers to work the election, let alone recruit the several bipartisan teams the hand count would require.

“My biggest concern, and the biggest concern of Sen. Borrelli, is accuracy, is doing it correctly,” he said. Unlike Borrelli, however, he believes machines are more accurate. “Maybe because I have had such good elections. Maybe because I have gone all these years and I’ve never been off a penny on any of the testing I’ve ever done.”

The supervisors had just spent hours discussing how the county is facing a multi-million dollar budget shortfall. Still, they didn’t seem deterred by the price tag.

“I think it’s worth investigating,” said Supervisor Hildy Angius, who has previously said balancing the county’s budget is among her top priorities.

Other attempts to hand-count ballots across the country since 2020 have taken weeks or months, have required anywhere from dozens to hundreds of workers, and have shown just how difficult it is to get accurate results. The state Senate-ordered partisan review of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million 2020 election ballots, for example, took Cyber Ninjas and its contractors more than three months, millions of dollars, and hundreds of volunteers, and ballots had to be recounted numerous times to try to get accurate results. In Nevada last year, workers counting by hand in Nye County took longer than expected, at a pace of about 2,000 ballots a day.

The Mohave supervisors represent one of the most Republican-heavy counties in the state. In 2020, a majority of the board initially refused to certify their election results. In 2022, a few supervisors indicated they did not want to certify, but the county attorney told them state law required supervisors to certify the results as presented to them.

Prior to the item Tuesday, the supervisors received legal advice from the county attorney’s office in executive session, which is closed to the public, according to their meeting agenda. They did not consult the attorney’s office on the topic during the public meeting later.

As in other counties that have proposed hand-counting ballots, the Mohave supervisors on Monday praised their elections director, saying that the problem wasn’t with their election, but with Maricopa and Pima counties’. Recounts in those counties found that each had accurately counted votes, and an independent review of Maricopa County’s ballot printing problems found they didn’t ultimately affect the accuracy of the election.

Tempert told the supervisors that while living in Pennsylvania, before he moved to Arizona, he attempted to lead a team conducting a hand count of one race on 65,000 ballots. It took two months, he said. In Mohave County’s November election, there were about 83,000 ballots and an average of 21 contests on them.

After finishing the initial count, a statewide recount would mean he would have to again assemble a bipartisan team to do it all over again, he said.

After Tempert spoke, Rogers told supervisors, to applause in the boardroom, that “the counties won’t start doing it until one heroic county starts doing it, and that’s you.” She then evoked her and Borrelli’s military service.

“For someone to say it can’t be done, I don’t accept that,” she said, “250 years of blood and treasure and the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marine and coast guardsman, they never said they couldn’t do it. They did it. It’s about the mission.”

Angius said she wants to see a report showing how much it would cost.

“At least we could present it to the public to say, if this is what you want, this is what it is going to take,” she said.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

After botching election results, Arizona county wants to try hand-counting ballots

2023-05-26T19:48:55+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

Update, May 26: Pinal County officials have clarified that the planned trial hand count of ballots will look at unused ballots from 2022, not the results of the midterm election, as a county supervisor originally told Votebeat.

After human error in Pinal County’s midterm election caused officials to initially fail to count hundreds of ballots, the county’s supervisors now want to try counting ballots by hand.

The county’s midterm mistakes weren’t caused by ballot tabulation machines, but rather because workers programmed machines incorrectly and overlooked machine errors as votes went uncounted. A Votebeat investigation published earlier this month found the county lacked procedures to properly track ballots cast at voting locations on Election Day and election officials didn’t adhere to safeguards to ensure each ballot was counted.

Still, three supervisors – all Republicans representing the GOP-leaning fast-growing suburban county just southeast of Phoenix – told Votebeat Wednesday they want to see if it would be feasible to hand-count ballots instead of using machines. That’s despite the fact that hand-counting ballots has repeatedly been proven to be far less accurate and efficient than counting ballots by machine, according to numerous studies and election experts across the country.

The supervisors, like many across the state and county, have been hammered by months of requests from residents who want the county to hand-count ballots because of false claims about vote switching that have swirled since the 2020 election.

Supervisors Chairman Jeff Serdy told Votebeat on Wednesday that the county is planning to do a trial hand-count using a sampling of ballots cast by voters in 2022 “to see how it would go.” Supervisor Mike Goodman told Votebeat he supports the plan.

Separately, Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh during the supervisors’ meeting on Wednesday asked that the supervisors discuss counting all 2024 ballots by hand — which is currently illegal in Arizona. State law requires paper ballots to be scanned and counted by tabulation machines.

Pinal County’s elections have been plagued with problems that hand-counting ballots will not solve. In the primary election, the county ran out of ballots or ran short at nearly one-fourth of voting locations on Election Day, causing massive delays for voters across the county.

A statewide recount ultimately revealed the errors in the November election, showing that election officials initially failed to count 442 ballots and, separately, failed to count some votes on dozens more. If not for the recount, those votes would have gone uncounted.

The county is taking steps to try to prevent future problems, Serdy said Wednesday, including adding more elections staff, creating additional checks and balances, and building a new elections center that will streamline processes. Elections Director Geraldine Roll has told the board that she is working on new processes to better ensure accurate results, such as creating new ballot tracking forms.

The sample hand-count of 2022 ballots is being planned alongside those fixes. Serdy said that it would make Pinal an example for the state, as state lawmakers attempt to pass laws to eliminate voting machines. He said the trial will be open to the public and press to observe.

More than 145,000 ballots were cast in Pinal County’s midterm election.

Cavanaugh, who wants to discuss fully hand-counting all 2024 ballots, told Votebeat after the meeting that, despite county officials saying human error caused the mistakes, he wants to have a discussion about hand-counting because he believes machines may have been part of the problem. County officials have not said this, though, explaining that workers were responsible for the incorrect machine settings and unheeded error messages on tabulators that caused the inaccuracies, along with a two-page ballot that made counting difficult.

“If we are having [issues with the machines], we should have a discussion about the merits of doing a manual count, or if there are machines that count better than the ones we’ve got,” Cavanaugh said.

Told that counting ballots by hand has proven to be less accurate than machine counting, Cavanaugh said “I’m not an elections expert.” He said he believes that it’s a worthy discussion because he knows workers had problems when running the ballots through the machines.

Cochise County was blocked in November from performing a full hand-count of ballots during its post-election audit, after a judge ruled that Arizona law prohibits it.

But interest in hand-counting continues. On Monday, state Sen. Sonny Borrelli falsely claimed that a non-binding resolution the Legislature passed this year prohibits counties from using their tabulation machines in future elections. That’s after Attorney General Kris Mayes issued an opinion May 18 making clear that a full hand-count of ballots is illegal.

At the Pinal County supervisors meeting Wednesday, three residents told supervisors during public comment that they believe the county should hand-count ballots, while talking about the county’s election problems.

“My suggestion is start looking at hand counts,” said Boots Hawks. “This isn’t something that we can go on ignoring, because it is festering.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Arizona isn’t banning machines to count ballots. Why a top senator’s declaration means nothing.

2023-05-23T17:19:41+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

A letter from the Arizona Senate majority leader to all of the state’s 15 counties Monday is sowing confusion over whether Arizona counties can still use machines to count ballots in future elections.

The letter from Sen. Sonny Borrelli, however, changes nothing about existing laws governing election equipment.

Borrelli’s letter tells county leaders that the Legislature, through a resolution they passed earlier this year, is prohibiting the use of “electronic voting systems” as the primary method of conducting federal elections unless the systems meet certain criteria — criteria that election systems currently used in Arizona do not currently meet.

But Borrelli’s assertion is not true. The resolution didn’t have the force of law, and the law hasn’t changed. Borrelli sent the letter out on his own, not on behalf of the Senate’s Republican majority. And counties will continue to follow the state and federal laws governing how they must run elections, according to Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat.

If this seems a little strange and complicated, that’s understandable. Let’s take it one question at a time:

What did the Legislature actually do?

House and Senate Republicans passed what’s called a Senate Concurrent Resolution in March on party-line votes.

This type of resolution is simply a declaration of the Legislature’s opinion. It isn’t intended to change or override state law. It doesn’t go to the governor or voters for final approval to become law, as a bill or ballot referendum would.

The resolution, SCR 1037, declared that state lawmakers were concerned about the security of electronic voting systems. It said that no electronic voting system could be used as the primary way of “conducting, counting, tabulating or verifying” federal elections in the state unless: They were made in the U.S. and accredited as prescribed by the U.S. Department of Defense; the source code is publicly available; and certain data is made publicly available within 24 hours of the polls closing.

Why didn’t those legislators pass a real law banning the machines?

They tried. Both House and Senate Republicans passed Senate Bill 1074, which had similar language to the resolution, but Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat and former secretary of state, vetoed it on April 6, saying “the election equipment required by the bill, as well as the problem it purports to solve, does not exist.”

“This bill neither strengthens our democracy, nor ensures that Arizonans can better exercise their fundamental right to vote,” she wrote.

Why is Borrelli claiming the resolution has the force of law?

To summarize, Borrelli said in his letter that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the final say in how elections are run.

He appears to be asserting that by passing the resolution, lawmakers were exercising their “plenary” or near-absolute power to determine the “times, places and manner” in which elections are run.

He’s evoking here what’s called the “independent state legislature theory,” a theory pending before the U.S. Supreme Court in Moore v. Harper, a case related to redistricting in North Carolina. This theory, especially in its broadest form, claims that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures sweeping power to determine the “times, places and manner” of federal elections without subjecting their decisions to the usual checks, such as review by state courts under the state constitution or gubernatorial vetoes.

What are counties supposed to do in response to Borrelli’s letter?

They can ignore it. The resolution “is non-binding and does not have the force of law,” Fontes said in a statement Monday, adding that election equipment must be certified under requirements set out by federal and state law.

“If those requirements or certification process were to be changed, it would require a regular bill to be passed by the legislature and signed by the governor—which is not the case for this non-binding resolution,” Fontes wrote.

Maricopa County Supervisors Chairman Clint Hickman emphasized in a statement that the letter came from Borrelli as an individual and not the Republican caucus, and individual lawmakers “cannot make laws or direct other divisions of government to take actions counter to state law.”

“I’m supportive of sourcing machinery and components made in the United States, but until that is realistic, the Board of Supervisors will appropriate the dollars needed to” acquire certified equipment, Hickman said.

Neither Republican Senate President Warren Petersen nor Republican House Speaker Ben Toma responded to questions from Votebeat about whether they supported Borrelli’s letter or the assertions in it.

Why do Borrelli and other Republican legislators want to ban voting machines?

Ever since former President Donald Trump began falsely claiming that voting machines had switched votes in favor of President Joe Biden, costing him the 2020 election, his supporters have been pushing states to ban electronic voting machines, claiming that hand-counting would make for safer elections. Hand counting has been proven to be far less accurate and efficient, though.

The resolution gives a few examples of machine vulnerabilities that lawmakers are concerned about, including one stemming from vulnerabilities recently announced by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Electronic voting machines, like any electronic systems, have vulnerabilities, but there are many checks and balances in place to ensure they count votes accurately.

“Election officials use varying technological, physical, and procedural controls to help safeguard these systems and the integrity of the election processes they support,” reads CISA’s website addressing election misinformation. “It’s important to note that there is no indication that cyber vulnerabilities have contributed to any voting system deleting, losing, or changing votes.”

The Senate resolution also gives an example of a local Tennessee election that had to be redone after a machine coding error.

What laws do Arizona counties follow for how to count ballots?

Arizona law requires the use of electronic equipment to count paper ballots.

Counties can only use equipment that has been certified by the state and federal government, and the equipment has to pass tests prior to every election to ensure it is counting ballots accurately.

The GOP desire to hand-count ballots instead of counting by machines pushed Cochise County in November to attempt to illegally hand-count all ballots as part of its post-election audit. That audit, by law, only tallies a certain portion of votes on a small number of ballots.

A judge blocked that plan, saying that it was illegal.

On Monday, Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, issued an opinion agreeing with the court’s decision. She told counties to “discard” an earlier informal opinion from prior Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, on the matter, which Cochise County officials had used to try to support their case in November.

What could happen next?

Borrelli’s claim is already being spread as truth by state lawmakers.

Despite Fontes saying that counties will proceed as normal, some elected leaders or election officials across the state could attempt to use Borelli’s assertions to claim their county has the right to hand-count ballots, just as Cochise County officials did with Brnovich’s informal opinion last year.

Some Republican officials could also take this as an opportunity to rebuke the claim and condemn the false narrative. In Mohave County, Republican County Supervisor Buster Johnson criticized Borrelli on Monday, telling The Arizona Mirror that the resolution “carries no weight in law,” and “it will needlessly confuse a lot of people.”

Or, the letter may simply become one of those false claims that consistently recirculates on social media, when convenient.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

No significant changes found in hand recount of 2020 presidential election in Lycoming County

2023-01-12T23:53:05+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Dig deeper into how our democracy works with Votebeat’s free newsletters.

A recount of the 2020 presidential race conducted this week in a Pennsylvania county did not find any major discrepancies from the original results.

Lycoming County employees spent nearly three days hand-counting more than 59,000 ballots after a year’s worth of pressure from local elections skeptics resulted in the county commissioners voting along party lines to recount the 2020 presidential and state auditor general’s race.

The recount was completed more quickly than expected. After counting from 8:30 a.m. to roughly 5 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, the ballots remaining Wednesday were counted in less than two hours, an overall average pace of 55.5 ballots per minute.

Lycoming County Elections Director Forrest Lehman hardly left the room, as he was eager to complete the process before his wife was scheduled to give birth next week.

Lycoming’s original results, tabulated by machines, showed 59,397 votes cast in the presidential contest, with 41,462 going to former President Donald Trump and 16,971 going to President Joe Biden. The hand recount resulted in a total of 59,374 votes in the presidential race, with Trump receiving 7 fewer votes and Biden receiving 15 fewer votes compared with the original tally.

In the auditor general’s race, the original tally was 58,627 votes cast, though the hand recount only found 58,615. Republican Auditor General Tim DeFoor’s winning vote total dropped by 10, and Democratic challenger Nina Ahmad’s total increased by 11.

Lehman said the county is still reviewing the hand count and plans to have a more expansive version of the report explaining the small changes later this month.

How was the recount performed?

Roughly 20 employees, working in teams of one reader and one recorder, counted 183 batches of ballots which had been organized by type: in-person, mail, and provisional.

The count was performed on an empty office floor in a county building in Williamsport. Three rows of white folding tables were set up, and workers spaced themselves at least one table apart.

Except for the low hum of the building’s heating unit and the sound of workers turning ballots and reading the votes, the room was mostly quiet.

Lehman sat at a table at one end of the room near a storage closet with the batches of ballots. Workers came to his table to sign batches in and out, and ask questions.

Each team had a slightly different approach. Some wore disposable rubber finger page turners, while others simply licked their fingers to make sure two ballots weren’t stuck together.

And while some teams counted both the presidential and auditor general’s race at once, others tallied one race completely before starting the same ballots over to capture the second race.

Human error impacts accuracy of process

Lehman repeatedly cautioned before and during the hand count that results would be less accurate due to the potential for human error, something that does not exist when ballots are counted by machine.

Many of the issues he highlighted were on display throughout the week.

The total number of ballots counted in roughly 18 batches this week did not match the previously recorded result, so with extra time at their disposal, workers counted those batches again. In all but five or six cases, Lehman said, employees discovered that mismatches were due to human error in the recount process — not the original count from poll workers on election night.

For example, a worker counting a batch from Jersey Shore, a borough in the county, originally counted three or four fewer ballots in the batch, although poll workers on election night had reported 363 ballots. A recount of the batch also showed 363 ballots.

Lehman said that these mismatches, known as “ballot inventory errors,” are generally due to poll workers writing the wrong numbers down on their inventory sheets on election night.

For their part, counters also occasionally became distracted and had to restart, miscounted ballots, or wrote the wrong numbers down on their vote tally sheets.

For example, one team of ballot counters turned in a tally sheet with 41 tally marks for a candidate, but wrote 44 in the “total” line, a mistake that was later caught and corrected.

Workers occasionally got off track. A black Labrador also roamed the room looking for leftover food from the catered lunches, and workers gave him affectionate pets as he passed under their tables.

“The machines don’t get tired, get distracted,” Lehman said while relaying an instance of a counter being so burnt out that, despite recounting a batch multiple times, they kept coming up with different numbers.

Another team counted 408 ballots in its batch, though the original count indicated the number should be 412. A county worker then discovered three ballots were stuck to the bottom of the box and the team recounted the whole batch, ultimately arriving at 412.

Will the results change any opinions?

Lehman noted that the goal of the exercise was not 100% accuracy, what he would be seeking if these were being used as the official results. Rather, it was to prove the accuracy of the machine tabulation system.

Karen DiSalvo, a volunteer with Audit the Vote PA, agreed in a statement before the count that this was the goal, as did Don Peters, chair of the county GOP committee, in an interview on the first day of the count.

“Our interest with this is in ensuring voters, not just our voters but all Lycoming voters, that this portion of the system functions,” he said. “I think there’s this idea that we want to find some issues. We don’t.”

But others think there is no outcome that would satisfy those who have spent the last two years questioning the results.

“They are using this as a vehicle to shout about their grievances,” said Morgan Allyn, the former chair of the county’s Democratic party.

Allyn was there as an observer for the party, and thinks that when the results disappoint recount backers again, they will move the goalpost.

There’s been some sign of this already. Lycoming Patriots, one of the conservative groups who pushed for the recount, sued the county last month for not fully implementing a series of election changes the group had sought in addition to the recount.

And DiSalvo has already sought to cast doubt on the results of the recount. She questioned the accuracy of the results even before they were posted, saying that because Lehman was the one counting the vote tally sheets, the results would be suspect because he had a “vested interest.”

DiSalvo complained about not having access to the tally sheets, but said if the results are accurate, “it confirms our position that hand counts can be done quickly and economically and should be a part of every election going forward.”

Peters said he thinks it will give people more confidence in the system.

“I think there was a total of maybe 37 discrepancies, so yeah that’s not a deal breaker,” he said. “But you get to half a percent, I think maybe there’s something to worry about.”

He said that it was “a win for democracy” to see the system was working correctly and have that question answered for constituents. The only complaint he had was the same as DiSalvo’s, that voter services tallied the final results.

“I have no issue with Forrest Lehman, but transparency requires someone outside to do that.”

Lycoming County is unique, not just because it was the only county to recount its 2020 election by hand, but also because of Lehman himself.

While many elections directors left in the wake of 2020’s threats against election workers, and others have declined to speak out against claims of fraud, Lehman has consistently pushed back against misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Asked if he is ever concerned that his outspokenness will compromise his safety or job security, he said “no,” and added that he felt it was his civic duty to correct misinformation.

“Because I’m an Eagle Scout, I believe in being true to yourself and leaving every campsite better than you found it,” Lehman said. “Whether that’s an actual campsite or your community.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Lycoming County concludes its recount of the 2020 presidential election

2023-01-11T21:30:36+00:00

Update, 4:30 p.m. ET, Jan 11: Over two and a half days, roughly 20 county employees hand counted more than 59,000 ballots at an average pace of 55.5 ballots per minute, exceeding the county’s original expectations.

With extra time at his disposal, Lycoming County Elections Director Forrest Lehman had workers recount roughly 18 batches of ballots where the number of ballots counted by employees did not match the expected number of ballots in the batch. In many cases, employees discovered that mismatches were due to human error in the recount process — not the original count from poll workers on election night. This discovery underscores the inaccuracies of hand counts, Lehman said.

Those performing the hand count also made a series of other basic errors. For example, one team of ballot counters turned in a tally sheet where they had made 41 tally marks for a candidate, but wrote 44 in the “total” line. That 44 was then crossed out at 41 was written next to the total line. Another team counted 408 ballots in its batch, though the original count indicated the number should be 412. A county worker then discovered three ballots were stuck to the bottom of the box and the team recounted the whole batch, arriving at 412.

Lehman expects to release numbers on the changes in the overall number ballots and candidates’ total votes later this week, and he hopes to have a more detailed report on how the recount went later in the month.

Original article published Jan. 9:

More than two years after the last ballot was cast in the 2020 election, Lycoming County plans to recount all presidential votes by hand — an extraordinary step no other Pennsylvania county has taken.

County commissioners ordered the recount under pressure from activists associated with an election conspiracy group and against the advice of the local election director, who told proponents it would be a poor use of resources and unlikely to show the fraud they feared.

The county will begin the recount of roughly 60,000 ballots Monday in a labor-intensive process that could last as long as three weeks and cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Audit the Vote PA and similar groups that promote baseless conspiracy theories about elections have argued for hand recounts and forensic audits across the state, though those efforts have largely failed. York County agreed to hand-count three precincts in last year’s election, and Butler County performed a smaller hand recount of the 2020 election.

But the push for a broader review picked up traction in Lycoming, a largely rural county of slightly more than 100,000 people in north central Pennsylvania, best known for hosting the Little League World Series every summer. A petition calling for the recount was signed by 5,000 people, something that didn’t happen in other counties.

Forrest Lehman, the county’s election director, doesn’t think the recount will convince election skeptics to trust the process.

“I think there’s 5,000 people out there who signed a petition indicating at least some level of mistrust or misunderstanding on how our elections works and I think at some level that will always be there,” he said.

Why is Lycoming performing a hand recount?

The push for the recount began after the 2020 election, according to a lawsuit filed against the county by the Lycoming County Patriots as well as a statement from local Audit the Vote PA volunteer and lawyer Karen DiSalvo.

Former U.S. Army Captain Seth Keshel, a well-known figure in election denial circles, released a report claiming that President Joe Biden’s strong performance in places like Lycoming County suggested fraud.

He cited growing Republican registration and dwindling numbers of Democrats, and compared that to the fact that Biden received 30% more votes in 2020 than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

Experts have repeatedly said such trends are not indicative of fraud.

Registered Democrats and Republicans can decide to cast ballots for candidates from other parties. On top of that, turnout for all voters across the U.S. was high in 2020, and Biden’s total in Lycoming was less than the number of registered Democrats in the county. Former President Donald Trump also gained a greater number of votes relative to Republican registration.

But some people were nevertheless skeptical. Last winter, DiSalvo led a group of Audit the Vote PA volunteers in a door-to-door canvassing effort, searching for evidence of fraud.

Nearly half of surveyed houses, the volunteers claimed, had “anomalies” such as people saying they voted but having no vote recorded or more voters registered to an address than occupants. But the group has not released its raw data, and a similar effort by Audit the Vote in Lancaster County failed to ask basic questions, such as whether the person surveyed at a residence had actually been registered at that same address in 2020.

DiSalvo’s group then circulated a petition asking the county for 10 elections-related concessions that together represented a radical overhaul, including ceasing the use of electronic vote-counting machines, conducting a forensic audit of the 2020 election, and performing a hand recount.

Lehman repeatedly pushed back against the arguments DiSalvo and others made.

“I don’t believe anything presented here today currently justifies the extraordinary request to recount a two-year-old election,” Lehman said at a June meeting, according to a local news report. “No one was entitled to a specific outcome in the presidential election based on what voter registration totals or polling data might’ve suggested to them.”

The petition for a recount eventually amassed roughly 5,000 signatures, and in October the county commissioners voted along party lines to go ahead.

How will it work?

In an interview with Votebeat and Spotlight PA this week, Lehman said that, because there was no precedent for such a hand recount in the state, he had to “invent the wheel, basically.”

Forty county employees will participate, divided into 20 teams of one counter and one recorder each.

Ballots will be divided into roughly 180 batches based on ballot type, such as in-person, mail, or provisional. Teams will count one batch at a time, with batches ranging in size from one ballot to 1,400. The teams will only recount the presidential and the state auditor general races.

Recorders will use a tally sheet to record marks for each candidate choice, overvotes, or write-in that appears on the ballots.

“If that sounds inelegant, it’s because there is no real elegant way to do a hand count,” Lehman said. “You’re taking a process that is automated and making it analog.”

The count will be overseen by party representatives and open to reporters. DiSalvo said she is scheduled to watch parts of the count.

Lehman said he is hoping to complete the bulk of the work in one week, but the count is scheduled to continue through Jan. 31 if needed.

The commissioners have estimated the recount will cost roughly $55,000, and Lehman said he will be tracking expenses.

What will the end result be?

Experts, academics, and local officials, including Lehman, have repeatedly pointed out the inaccuracy of hand recounts, which introduce more potential for human error than machine counting. Lehman also noted that the county already performs audits after each election to ensure accuracy.

“I believe there is no way this hand count will be as accurate as the voting equipment,” Lehman said, stressing that the recount is unlikely to change the results. Small shifts, however, are possible for several reasons.

First, when election workers collected and counted their voted, unvoted, provisional, and other ballot types at the end of election night, they may have slightly miscounted the amount in each batch, and small errors like this are often discovered during recounts.

Also, humans and machines will interpret marks on the ballot differently. A mark that crosses between two candidates’ bubbles may trigger debate over the voter’s intent.

When this occurs, voter intent is determined by a team of bipartisan observers.

Finally, there is simple human error. If a volunteer gets distracted while counting a large batch of ballots, they may lose track of which ballots have or haven’t been counted, but Lehman said he has worked to minimize potential distractions.

Will it change minds?

Lehman is unsure about whether the recount will satisfy skeptics. The Lycoming County Patriots are suing the county claiming the commissioners are obligated to comply with all 10 of their requests, not just the recount.

“This hand count is one piece of the puzzle,” DiSalvo said in a statement. “We have paper ballots for a reason. We want to see if the paper ballots match the machine counts reported.”

In response to a follow-up question about whether she thought the recount would assuage concerns, DiSalvo said she didn’t expect the findings to be off by more than a few votes. She said rebuilding trust in the local process is the ultimate goal.

Lehman said the country’s approach to election technology has shifted over the years, moving toward fully electronic voting systems in the early 2000s and then, in recent years, shifting in the other direction. Lehman thinks the current balance between technology and manual work is about right, but he recognizes that not everyone will be convinced.

Still, “we’ve got to find a way as a country to get away from where we are now,” he said. “It’s OK for people to not be OK with the outcome of an election, but it’s not OK to have the conversation we are having right now. It’s not OK to only trust elections when your candidate wins. That is extremely corrosive.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Cochise County supervisors sue elections director to get access to ballots for hand count

2022-11-19T00:30:59+00:00

Update, Nov. 18: Cochise County supervisors withdrew the lawsuit against the county’s election director, saying that they did not want to interfere with an expected statewide recount. That ends the effort to expand the county’s hand count audit, for now.

Two Republican supervisors in Cochise County are suing the county’s elections director, asking a judge to order her to give them access to midterm election ballots so the county recorder can conduct an expanded hand count audit.

It’s the latest development in a months-long saga in which Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, along with Republican County Recorder David Stevens, have been trying to find a way to hand count ballots cast in the election, saying that the community does not trust the county’s vote-counting machines. A county judge ruled last week that it was unlawful for the county to expand the statutorily required hand count audit, which typically examines a sample of ballots, to examine 100% of ballots. The Arizona Supreme Court then declined to hear an appeal filed by the supervisors.

In their complaint against county elections director Lisa Marra, filed Monday in Cochise County Superior Court, Crosby and Judd, the two Republicans on the three-member board, told the court that while the order prevented the county from completing a 100% hand count, it did not prevent them from expanding the hand count to nearly all ballots, which is what they intend to do.

“Marra has refused to comply with the Board’s lawful command to conduct an expanded hand count,” the complaint states.

But the complaint also said the county attorney told Marra it would be illegal to follow the supervisors’ orders on the hand count, which means Marra “cannot reasonably be expected to comply” unless the court compels her to do so.

About 47,000 Cochise County voters cast ballots in this election, and about 90% have been counted as of Tuesday morning, according to a county estimate. If the expanded hand count moves forward, it would need to happen before the county’s Nov. 28 deadline to certify election results. The supervisors have a meeting scheduled for Friday to certify the results.

County taxpayers are on the hook for at least some of the legal costs related to the hand count effort. The county attorney’s office is covering Marra’s outside legal counsel, said Deputy County Administrator Sharon Gilman.

It’s unclear at this point whether the supervisors and recorder will pay their outside counsel with county funds. The supervisors discussed how they would pay their attorney at a public meeting Tuesday, where many residents told them that it shouldn’t be on taxpayers to cover the costs.

The supervisors hired Bryan Blehm in the initial case defending the full hand count and in the lawsuit against Marra. Blehm previously represented Cyber Ninjas, the main contractor hired by Arizona Senate Republicans to review Maricopa County’s 2020 election. Stevens also hired an attorney that had defended Cyber Ninjas, but Gilman said she did not know how he was paying for it.

“This action item,” Hereford resident Jill Hamilton said at Tuesday’s meeting, “is asking taxpayers to pony up and pay your Cyber Ninja lawyer for the decision you made to continue with your action of going against Arizona law and the injunctions of three judicial entities. Hmm. If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit.”

The supervisors decided to hold off on voting on how to pay until Nov. 29, although they noted that Blehm’s $10,000 retainer is already past due.The lawsuit against Marra says that the supervisors filed it in their official capacity, but the supervisors did not yet vote to file it, and a meeting with that matter on the agenda has not been scheduled. Crosby and Judd say in the complaint it’s their intent to vote on this soon. It’s unclear how they filed the lawsuit without first discussing the matter, which would violate state open meeting laws. A meeting that had been scheduled for 1 p.m. Tuesday to discuss the expanded hand count was canceled.

Cochise County is one of several Republican-controlled counties in the U.S. to attempt a hand count of ballots after unproven conspiracy theories in 2020 claimed that vote-counting machines were not secure or accurate and had been programmed to fix the vote for Joe Biden.

Why are the supervisors suing the elections director?

Under state law, all Arizona counties must conduct a hand count audit of machine-tabulated results if the county’s political parties participate and provide workers. The political parties supervise the hand count, which examines a small portion of ballots and, in non-presidential years, four contests on each ballot.

This audit is typically set up by the counties’ elections directors, and under state law, ballots must remain in the elections directors’ custody until after the election is certified.

Marra had made clear to the supervisors and the court that she would only conduct the statutorily-required hand count. Knowing this, the supervisors had delegated authority to conduct the expanded hand count to Stevens, the recorder, who has supported their effort.

Even after the judge ruled last week that their action to pursue a 100% hand count was illegal, and before the court could even consider the appeal the supervisors filed last week, Stevens proceeded with preliminary steps for an expanded hand count.

He “randomly selected sixteen out of seventeen vote centers to conduct an expanded hand count of election day ballots only,” according to the lawsuit. When the Arizona Democratic Party found out about this effort, its lawyers sent Stevens a letter asserting this was in violation of the court order.

Around the same time, Judd set up a special meeting for Tuesday for the board to consider expanding the hand count up to “99.9%” of ballots.

On Thursday, County Attorney Brian McIntyre sent a letter to a lawyer representing Marra on the matter, telling her that it would be illegal to proceed with the expanded hand count and Marra could be charged with numerous felonies if she cooperated with the supervisors, including interfering with an election, interfering with election equipment, and violating a court order.

“I have alerted the appropriate authorities to the potential violations based upon the statements of two elected officials connected to this,” McIntyre said. “It is my sincere hope that no action will be required of them and that the rule of law will prevail.”

The county attorney’s office had warned the supervisors from the start that moving forward with an expanded hand count would be illegal, and therefore said it would be a conflict to represent the supervisors if they moved forward.

While the supervisors initially said they would pay attorneys privately, the bill for the retainer is outstanding. Judd said it was still her intention to raise private funds. “We are working on a way to reimburse this to the county,” she said at the meeting.

This weekend, Marra proceeded with the typical state-prescribed audit. She told Votebeat this weekend that she had conducted the statutorily-required hand count audit of ballots, and it had found 100% accuracy in the election results.

The lawsuit claims that Marra had refused to comply with the supervisors’ orders by not conducting an expanded hand count, not permitting the recorder and his personnel to access the counting center, and not turning over the ballots to the recorder.

But the complaint does not say if or when the board had reached out to Marra after the judge’s ruling to ask her to expand the hand count, or whether Stevens tried to get access to the ballots.

Asked whether Stevens tried to obtain the ballots, Marra told Votebeat he did not.

“Didn’t even ask,” she said.

Contact Votebeat reporter Jen Fifield at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Judge blocks Cochise County’s plan for full hand count of ballots

2022-11-08T05:27:08+00:00

A judge ruled Monday that Cochise County cannot conduct a hand count of all ballots cast in the midterm election, saying that it is not legal in Arizona.

The decision blocks, for now, the latest effort by GOP leaders to hand-count ballots, a method experts say is slower and less accurate than machine counts. Republicans nationwide have nonetheless pushed hand counts in the wake of the 2020 election, saying they distrust the security and accuracy of vote-counting machines even after multiple court reviews and investigations across the country found that machines tallied the votes accurately. A hand count ordered by one Nevada county ran into problems last month.

In Cochise County, the Republican-led board of the southern Arizona county planned to use the vote-counting machines to tally votes but also wanted a full hand count. Last month, the board ordered the full hand count, painting it as an expansion of the limited hand-count audit already prescribed in state law. Typically, the hand-count audit in Cochise County examines four or five races on fewer than 2,000 ballots. The board called for one that would have examined four races on all ballots, with estimated turnout at about 40,000.

Pima County Superior Court Judge Casey McGinley wrote Monday that the supervisors had no authority to order the full count.

He said state law requires counties to start the audit by randomly selecting ballots to examine out of those cast in-person on Election Day, and it’s not possible to randomly select ballots when examining all ballots. For ballots cast early, he wrote in his order, the counties must examine a pre-set sample size, not all of them. He directed the county recorder and elections director to proceed with the more limited hand-count audit outlined in state law.

The Cochise County effort is strikingly reminiscent of the full recount of Maricopa County’s 2020 presidential election. Some of the lawyers defending the process are even the same, as is the stated goal: to improve voter confidence. Like Maricopa’s audit, it also features partisan leaders who have been spurred on by conspiracy theories and are inexperienced at election best practices; it would receive outside resources; and it has lacked public transparency.

The difference here is that the partisan review in Maricopa County happened long after results were certified, with no chance of affecting the outcome. This one would happen before the results are certified, which could have delayed the process or prompted a messy dispute over results.

The Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans, a civil rights group, and a Cochise County resident sued to block the expanded audit, arguing it was illegal. Lawyers from Elias Law — the firm founded by Marc Elias, who typically represents Democrats and often litigates voting rights cases — argued for the plaintiffs. The secretary of state’s office also said it wasn’t permitted under the law and threatened to sue, but ultimately just filed a brief in the case in support of the hand count opponents.

The ruling halts the hand count for now, but McGinley said Friday he expects his decision to be appealed. If appealed, the court would need to address the matter quickly, since state law says the audit must start within 24 hours after the polls close

Assistant Secretary of State Allie Bones called the judge’s decision Monday “a win for Arizona’s voters.”

“Drastic changes to election processes, especially during an election, would create chaos and confusion,” Bones wrote.

Month-long spectacle comes to a close, for now

The decision comes after a month-long spectacle in Cochise County, with multiple hours-long meetings debating the full hand count as it went from on, to off, to on again.

The two Republican supervisors on the three-member board, Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, were at first adamant that they would approve a full hand count. Then, the secretary of state’s office threatened to sue, and state Rep. Joel John, a Republican, warned of potential loss of state funding.

Crosby and Judd instead approved a hand count that expanded the number of ballots tallied in the county’s election audit, without clarifying whether it would look at all ballots or not, sparking mass public confusion. They even held a subsequent meeting to reassure the secretary of state’s office they would only be conducting a partial hand count. Then they received a favorable informal opinion from the state attorney general on the matter and decided to move forward with the full count anyway, prompting the lawsuit.

Under state law, counties are required to hand-count votes on ballots cast in at least 2% of voting locations on Election Day, or cast in two voting locations, whichever is greater. The law also requires a count of 1% of early ballots, or 5,000 early ballots, whichever is less.

The in-person Election Day ballots must be selected randomly. “By common definition, a selection of precincts is not random if all precincts are chosen,” the judge wrote on Monday.

Regarding the early ballots, while the set number is prescribed in law, the Election Procedures Manual also states that “counties may elect to audit a higher number of ballots at their discretion.” The supervisors who approved the full count relied on this wording to make their case.

But the judge found that state law supersedes the procedures manual when there is a conflict, according to legal precedent that says “an EPM regulation that contradicts statutory requirements does not have the force of the law.”

McGinley wrote that while the full hand count was meant to “ameliorate fears” that vote-counting machines do not count votes correctly, there was “no evidence before this court that the tabulation is inaccurate in the first instance, or more importantly, that the audit system established by law is insufficient to detect any inaccuracy it may possess.”

Crosby declined to comment on the ruling Monday evening because he hadn’t seen the judge’s opinion. Stevens did not respond to an email requesting comment.

Would the supervisors certify election results?

Prior to the judge’s ruling, the warnings about the illegality of the hand count caused the county’s election director, Lisa Marra, who typically conducts the hand count audit, to bow out. That put it in the hands of County Recorder David Stevens, even though he has no experience performing the audits.

McGinley questioned Stevens on Friday about what he would do if the hand count results differed from the machine count. Typically, if the results don’t match by a certain margin, the audit is expanded.

Stevens, who has supported the idea of a full hand count from the start, told McGinley that he would report the results from the hand count to the board prior to the board’s vote to finalize results, even if the counts were different.

“I feel I would be bound to report what the audit produced. What happens after that would be out of my hands,” Stevens said.

That would leave the county supervisors, two Republicans who say they don’t trust the machines and one Democrat who says she does, to decide whether to certify the official results from the machine count.

While every county certified 2020’s election results, Republican supervisors across the state felt pressured not to do so, and some in other states officials attempted to block certification of their results. If Republicans running for statewide office do not win, some of those candidates have suggested that they will assert it was due to election fraud, and there may again be pressure for counties to block certification.

Disparate results from the hand count may provide supervisors with a new reason to say the vote-counting machines cannot be trusted. But there are other, more likely reasons why the counts could be different. As many explainers and debunks have pointed out, hand counts are far less accurate than machine counts, because humans have proven to be poor at repetitive tasks.

If the hand-count audit was to go later than Nov. 28, it would not meet the deadline for counties to certify their results. If the results from the hand count were to differ substantially from the machine count, it might cast enough doubt on the results for the county board to refuse to certify them.

Stevens, the recorder, and the supervisors who supported the audit are being represented by Bryan Blehm and Alexander Kolodin, two attorneys who, at times, represented the Cyber Ninjas, the company the Arizona Senate Republicans contracted to lead the Maricopa County full hand count.

Blehm questioned Marra aggressively at the hearing Friday, insinuating that the longtime county elections director was opposed simply because she was upset the supervisors had reassigned the audit to Stevens.

“You believe this is your baby, don’t you?” he said.

For her part, Marra made clear that she would only do the audit as prescribed under state law.

Marra testified that she has real concerns about the chain of custody being broken if she hands them off to Stevens, because as the officer in charge of elections, it’s her responsibility to keep the ballots secure. She said she believes she would be charged with a felony if the chain of custody were to be broken.

Recorder says he’s equipped for a full hand count

The rush to produce procedures for the proposed audit, and lack of experience of the person running the count, is “a recipe for disaster,” plaintiffs’ attorney Lali Madduri told the judge Friday. The planned count would put the security of the ballots at risk, create counting errors, and damage voter confidence, she said.

“We are talking about a cascading series of events that are going to seriously undermine the outcome of this election and the integrity of this election,” Madduri said.

All day Friday, attorneys questioned Stevens and Marra about their understanding of state law regarding the hand-count audit, as well as whether Stevens could pull this off without prior experience. The testimony of the two officials diverged on important points.

Stevens told the court he had more than enough volunteers, about 300, to make the full hand count possible. He said he would start training volunteers on Wednesday and begin the count on Saturday or Monday.

Stevens testified that he had four possible locations he could use, and the space would be “donated.” Arizona law prohibits election officials from accepting private money for election costs, but this would be an in-kind donation, which is legal.

State law says that no more than 75% of volunteers can be appointed by the same political party. Stevens said he believed he had enough volunteers, including Democrats and Libertarians, to meet that requirement.

Madduri grilled Stevens on how exactly he would ensure ballots were secure, questioning him on how he would keep the ballots from becoming damaged, if he had written training procedures, and how many days he had to complete the full count.

Stevens said he had eight business days of counting planned, but he thought he could accomplish the tally of the 40,000 or so ballots in less than two or three days.

In 2020, Cochise County’s hand-count audit tallied 1,686 ballots out of 60,963. That took two days.

Stevens told the court he plans to use a method that Marra separately testified would lead to too many inaccuracies. In this method, one person calls out the vote on each contest, and two people write down the result. After 25 ballots, the results are compared. If there are any discrepancies, they do it again.

Marra said, through experience, she learned the stacking method, which requires ballots to be stacked based on the candidate who won the race, is more accurate and efficient.

Madduri asked Stevens if he was familiar with the hand counts in Esmeralda or Nye counties in Nevada. “Would it surprise you to learn that in these hand counts, they had inconsistent returns that needed to be re-audited?” she said. “Would it surprise you to learn it took seven hours for every 300 ballots to be counted?”

When Stevens was asked whether Marra would be allowed to observe, Stevens said he doesn’t want to exclude anybody, “especially her, because she has some experience.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Secretary of State’s Office threatens lawsuit if Cochise County conducts hand count of ballots

2022-10-21T16:44:08+00:00

The Arizona secretary of state’s office is threatening to sue Cochise County if it moves forward with a hand count of all ballots in the midterm election.

State Elections Director Kori Lorick sent a letter Wednesday to the county supervisors saying the office agrees with the Cochise county attorney’s office and state Legislative Council that, under state law, the county is not authorized to count its ballots by hand. Also, Lorick wrote, a hand count would put the accuracy of the election at risk and the time it would take to hand-tally all votes would make it impossible to meet the state’s deadline for finalizing election results.

“If the Board votes to proceed with a full hand count—putting at risk the accuracy and integrity of our elections—the Secretary will take all available legal action to ensure that Cochise County conducts the 2022 General Election in compliance with Arizona law,” Lorick wrote.

Still, it appears the supervisors will take a vote on the plan, even though early voting is already underway for the Nov. 8 election. They will meet at 2 p.m. Monday to discuss it and possibly vote, according to an agenda posted on the county’s website on Friday.

Supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, the two Republicans on the three-member board, want to hand-count all votes cast in the midterm election by the county’s 87,000 registered voters. After receiving Lorick’s letter, Judd told Votebeat that she does not know whether she will vote to make the hand count happen, but she still wants to have the discussion and vote next week.

“I’m not going to give up on it yet,” Judd said.

She doesn’t believe the hand count would be illegal, saying, “there are a lot of legal opinions out there.”

She brushed off other concerns in the letter, saying that votes were counted by hand before vote-counting machines and it worked. She said it would be challenging to recruit a bipartisan team, and it would take a long time, but she wanted to try to make it happen.

“It’s not as big of a deal as some people are worried about,” she said.

The plan as initially proposed was to continue to use the county’s vote-counting machines to count the ballots, but to also do a hand count. The supervisors haven’t provided details of how they’d conduct the hand count, how much it would cost taxpayers, or which method’s results would be official if the two don’t match. The county’s election director estimated a hand count would require 2,500 total hours.

Supervisor Chairwoman Ann English, a Democrat who is opposed to the plan, told Votebeat on Wednesday that, upon reading the state elections director’s letter, “it seemed to be pretty clear that the intention of counting all votes [by hand] is not legal or possible.”

The county attorney’s office repeatedly warned the supervisors earlier this month that their plan was not legal, and the office would block any vote, because allowing a vote on an illegal proposal would increase the county’s liability and risk. It’s unclear how the topic got approved for an official meeting agenda. The county attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

English said she has not been told that the attorney’s office’s opinion has changed on the matter. She said she believes the other supervisors somehow maneuvered around the county attorney’s office to call the special meeting.

She said she hopes the other two supervisors change their mind about going against the advice of their legal counsel.

The state’s Legislative Council recently weighed in on the topic in an Oct. 5 letter sent to state Rep. Gail Griffin, a Republican who lives in the county, agreeing with the county attorney’s office that a full hand count of ballots is only allowed under state law “if it becomes impracticable to count all or some of the ballots with tabulating equipment.”

Lorick urged the supervisors Wednesday to “abandon this misguided effort,” saying that the vote-counting machines are secure and accurate, and a full hand count raises numerous concerns.

“Notably, hand counting is necessarily time intensive and prone to human error,” Lorick wrote. “Any election director in Arizona — the official responsible for overseeing tabulation of ballots — can attest that it’s impossible to complete an accurate hand count of an election with dozens of races on the ballot in time to comply with applicable statutory deadlines, including the county canvass deadline.”

The deadline requires counties to finalize, or canvass, their elections between six and 20 days after the election.

“Drastically changing procedures now — mere weeks before Election Day — creates significant risk of administrative error and has the potential to cause voter confusion and mistrust in our elections,” Lorick continued.

Judd said that she viewed the letter from the secretary of state’s office as a “threat,” but it would not dissuade her from moving forward. She says she wants to do the count to increase voter confidence.

Election researchers and consultants generally advise against hand-counting ballots, because machine counts are proven to be more accurate and efficient. Pre-election testing and post-election audits, which can involve partial hand counts, help ensure machines counted votes accurately.

The Republican-leaning county is the latest to propose a hand count. The proposal has surfaced around the country, fueled by distrust of vote-counting machines since the 2020 election and fed by conspiracy theorists spreading unfounded claims that voting machines were programmed to switch votes in favor of Joe Biden.

There is no evidence that voting machines were hacked in 2020, all court cases alleging so have been dismissed, and federal agencies and experts have said that 2020 was the most secure election to date.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Hand-counting of ballots in Arizona county deemed illegal

2022-10-12T17:38:11+00:00

Supervisors in a southern Arizona county said Tuesday they are intent on voting on a proposal to hand-count all ballots cast in November’s election, despite repeated warnings from their lawyer that the plan would be illegal.

Deputy Cochise County attorney Christine Roberts repeatedly told the supervisors that state law does not give them the authority to conduct a full hand count of ballots cast by the county’s 87,000 voters, and even if it did, it isn’t legal to change election procedures this close to an election.

She may be able to prevent them from moving forward. The county attorney’s office must approve items before they are placed on a supervisors meeting agenda, County Administrator Rich Karwaczka told Votebeat after the meeting.

“The county attorney would block something they believe is unlawful,” he said, adding that allowing a vote on an illegal proposal would increase the county’s liability and risk.

Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, both Republicans, want to continue using vote-counting machines this election, and to add a full hand count, as first reported by Votebeat. Together, they’re a majority on their three-person board. With Election Day only a few weeks away and early voting already under way, they didn’t offer details about how it would work or who would bear the costs.

After Roberts told Crosby and Judd their plan was illegal during a public work session Tuesday, Judd said she was going to obtain a “second opinion,” perhaps from Attorney General Mark Brnovich, and draft an agenda item for the supervisors to vote on at an emergency meeting anyway.

“I’m just so sure of it being possible,” Judd said. “It’s very hard for me to listen to our wonderful attorney there. It’s like, ‘Oh, quit telling us we can’t.’”

Before the supervisors’ work session Tuesday, Elections Director Lisa Marra, the public official who would be responsible for finding a way to execute the hand count of all ballots cast by the county’s 87,000 voters, told Votebeat she has major concerns with the proposal.

Among them: She estimated the proposed hand count would take about 2,500 hours to complete.

Marra was invited to attend the work session but did not. Afterward, she had no comment. “Rarely do words fail me, but here we are,” Marra said.

Under Arizona law, ballots should be tabulated with certified election equipment and “a hand count may only be used if tabulating with certified equipment becomes impracticable,” according to C. Murphy Hebert, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office.

A hand count could also potentially violate the state’s requirement that results not be provided publicly until after the polls close on Election Day, Hebert said. That’s because the plan is to recruit volunteers to start tallying votes cast immediately, weeks ahead of Election Day, and those volunteers would know partial results before polls close.

It’s also unclear where the county would get the time, money, or bipartisan staff to do the hand count – questions that, for the most part, Crosby and Judd did not address Tuesday.

Recorder David Stevens, who helps run elections in the county and has spoken in favor of the hand-count proposal, said, “There is always a cost to an election, it’s just where you want to spend the money.” He pointed out that the county’s vote-counting machines cost millions of dollars, implying that if hand-counting works, the county could get rid of the machines.

Before the meeting, Judd said residents had pushed for the hand count, prompting the work session, but that a hand count for the 2022 election was unlikely. In an email last month, she had encouraged residents’ efforts.

Nonetheless, she and Crosby pushed back hard against Roberts’ legal concerns during the work session, and Crosby said he wanted the proposal to do a hand count this year to be voted on at an emergency meeting on Thursday.

Karwaczka later told Votebeat the county attorney must decide if this qualifies as an emergency. The next regular board meeting is Oct. 25.

Supervisors Chairwoman Ann English cautioned her colleagues about the dangers of defying advice from the county attorney’s office. “If we go against the county attorney’s office then we have no one to represent us,” English said.

In another odd twist, the board allowed Sierra Vista resident Joseph Patterson to speak in favor of the proposal. Typically, no public comment is permitted at work sessions, and no other member of the public was allowed to speak. According to Judd, Patterson had requested that supervisors hold the work session.

Patterson told the board that he knew of 140 people willing to volunteer to count ballots.

English, the only Democrat on the board, allowed Patterson to debate the legality of the proposal with her and with Roberts, the county attorney.

“I appreciate the legal opinion,” Patterson said, adding, “I’m not an attorney, obviously.”

Nonetheless, he continued to assert the hand count would be legal. “In my research, I couldn’t find anything that is prohibitive of hand counts anywhere,” he said, adding, “It is not prohibited.”

In response, Roberts again said that the board does not have “express authority” to do a full hand-count.

“Your recourse is really not to this board of supervisors. It is to go to your state legislators and tell them what you want so they can build it into the statutes,” she told Patterson.

Judd hinted that might be the end goal anyway.

“If we are not successful, if we don’t get quite to that 100% hand count on Election Day — because it is only three and a half weeks away — we have gotten to the point that we are going to be a lot more influential in the Legislature,” Judd said. “We are going to say, ‘Look, we can do it. We need the laws changed.’ But if we don’t even try then we have not done anything.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Hand-counting ballots would cause “downright chaos” in an Arizona county, experts say

2022-10-11T18:06:18+00:00

Cochise County officials are considering hand-counting all ballots cast by the county’s 87,000 voters this election, a radical measure for a county of its size that election experts say is also problematic and unnecessary.

A hand count would produce inaccurate results, confuse voters, and consume extensive time, money, and labor, said C.Jay Coles, senior policy and advocacy associate at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for the responsible use of technology in elections. The county elections office estimated a hand count in Cochise would take 2,500 total hours of work. Election researchers and consultants generally advise against hand-counting ballots, because machine counts are proven to be more accurate and efficient.

“It’s such an opportunity for confusion, and, really, downright chaos,” Coles said.

The Republican-leaning county on the southern Arizona border is the latest to propose such an idea, part of a larger trend fueled by distrust of vote-counting machines that emerged after the 2020 election, when conspiracy theorists spread unfounded claims that the machines had been programmed to switch votes in favor of Joe Biden.

In neighboring Nevada, a state judge recently ruled that Nye County could move forward with a similar plan that had been challenged by a progressive advocacy group, ruling that the state law doesn’t prohibit hand-counting ballots. Efforts to force hand counts in New Hampshire slowed down election results last month for the primary. And after the election, in El Paso County, Colorado, losing candidates called for their races to be recounted by hand, which is not allowed under state law.

Less than one percent of registered voters in America live in jurisdictions where ballots are hand-counted, and many of them are small towns or precincts, according to research conducted by Verified Voting.

Cochise County officials will meet Tuesday, the day before early voting begins in Arizona, to consider whether to follow the county’s machine tabulation of paper ballots with a full hand count of those same ballots. The Cochise County officials who want to discuss the idea — two of three supervisors and the recorder — told Votebeat they know the hand count probably can’t happen for this election, considering the time, people, and money it would take. But they say they aren’t confident in the security of voting machines and still want to talk about their options.

“I could see adding a hand count to it all, to put everyone’s mind at ease,” Republican Supervisor Tom Crosby said.

Supervisors do not typically vote at work sessions, so likely the earliest that changes could be voted on is the next regular board meeting, on Oct. 25.

It’s unclear whether hand-counting ballots would violate state law, which says that ballots should be tabulated with certified election equipment, and “a hand count may only be used if tabulating with certified equipment becomes impracticable,” according to secretary of state’s office spokesperson C. Murphy Hebert. A hand count would also potentially violate the state’s requirement that results not be provided publicly until after the polls close on Election Day, Hebert said.

Other than potential legal issues, Hebert emphasized that “to allow hand counts of all ballots would be a wholesale change of state policy, require extensive logistical changes (staffing and space), extend the length of time required to tabulate results by weeks, produce inaccurate results, and potentially damage or misplace ballots, which could impact the ability to conduct recounts or review in legal challenges.”

“Every single time a person touches a ballot, it risks degrading or impacting the voter intent on that ballot,” she said.

Arizona already has many checks and balances in place to ensure that votes are tabulated accurately. State law requires counties to test their machines prior to each election to make sure they are counting votes correctly, for example, and counties are required to conduct a post-election hand count of a portion of ballots if the political parties request it and supply enough workers. If that hand audit finds discrepancies, it can be extended to recount more ballots.

“A hand-count audit on top of a full hand count would be pointless,” Hebert said.

Cochise County Supervisor Chairwoman Ann English, a Democrat, said she’s confident in the effectiveness of this hand-count audit and doesn’t think a full hand count is necessary.

“I just think that is overboard,” English said.

The full hand count of Maricopa County’s 2020 ballots launched by the state Senate and paid for mostly by Trump allies took months and hundreds of workers to compete and cost millions. It was a disorganized and dysfunctional affair, yet the final results were only slightly different from the official election results, confirming that the machines counted votes accurately.

“Anything Else Is Less Secure”

Crosby, Supervisor Peggy Judd, and County Recorder David Stevens say they are not pushing the hand-counting decision but are simply entertaining an idea from voters who are concerned about the vote-counting machines.

But these county officials — all Republicans — have not responded to these concerns by assuring the voters that their systems are secure or by debunking false narratives, as Maricopa County Republicans and Republican officials in other states have done.

Stevens told Votebeat that when he is asked about the security of his county’s elections, he tells voters that the most secure election is one with only Election Day in-person, precinct-based voting, with ballots counted by hand. “Anything else is less secure,” he said.

He said he told concerned voters that they should advocate for a meeting on the topic.

“I said let’s get a work session, contact the supervisors,” he said.

Asked if he trusts the county’s election process, Stevens said, “I do for the part I’m involved in.”

Stevens, like most of Arizona’s elected recorders, handles voter registration, mail-in voting, and in-person early voting. The Elections Department separately handles Election Day voting and ballot counting. But Stevens also said he can’t control every aspect of mail-in voting, and he has concerns with the U.S. Postal Service’s handling of ballots, after he said he has dealt with a few local post offices making mistakes when processing ballots for delivery.

Crosby and Judd said residents came to them asking for a work session after meeting with Stevens.

At the supervisors’ Sept. 27 board meeting, a handful of residents advocated for the hand count. “This is purely a back-up or check on a system which should be in place anyway,” Sierra Vista resident Joseph Patterson said. “So what we are hoping for is to regain trust, restore faith in our government, in one another. Be able to trust the results that we see.”

Judd also has encouraged residents to speak out on the topic.

In a Sept. 23 email that Judd said she sent to residents who had expressed interest in the topic, she asked residents to look through Arizona election law for anything that might support the idea of the county hand-counting ballots. She encouraged them to continue their advocacy and also suggested people remove themselves from the early voter list “as a way to demonstrate our collective desire to have in person elections on election day.” Votebeat found the letter on a local mayoral candidate’s Facebook page.

“I believe a large number of voters in our county taking this action with the Recorders office will give wings to our movement overall,” Judd wrote.

Reached by phone, Judd told Votebeat that she was simply supporting the group’s excitement, but she didn’t necessarily agree with their ideas. “I wanted them to know that I was hearing them,” she said.

Crosby submitted the request to place the idea on the work session agenda. He said his email inbox has been flooded with requests to eliminate the use of voting machines. He said everyone at a Cochise County Republican Committee meeting he went to last week “hates the machines.”

Crosby said he was spammed with perhaps thousands of the same email on the topic. He shared a few examples, all coming from an email address connected to an advocacy group called Act for America. The email appears to have been sent to county officials across the state.

“We are calling on all Arizona County Officials across the state to ban the use of all electronic voting machines, including ballot tabulators, in this upcoming election,” the email says. “All machines are a national cyber security risk that is unsecure, hackable, and inaccurate!”

Candidates in the statewide election have also perpetuated false claims about the insecurity of voting machines. Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, both Republican, filed a lawsuit attempting to block the use of vote-counting machines in the November election, claiming there were problems with the machines. A federal judge dismissed the suit for lack of standing in August.

Hand-Counting a Flawed Proposition

Hand-counting advocates who, of late, mention Brazil or France as models of places that use the method without problems don’t consider the many differences between elections in those countries and the United States. For example, those elections sometimes have only one contest on the ballot. In Cochise County, Elections Director Lisa Marra said there are an average of 50 contests on the ballot, depending on the precinct.

The length of the ballot makes hand-counting a lengthy and tricky proposition.

Coles said those who don’t trust machines can take comfort in the hand-count audit. His group advocates for risk-limiting hand-count audits, which use a formula to determine the number of ballots to recount. He said machines have been proven to be far more accurate than humans, who are known to be error-prone because they tire quickly during the repetitive task of counting votes.

“As human beings, our minds can wander,” he said.

The other problem, he said, is Arizona has no laws or legal guidance specifying which count would be official if the hand count doesn’t match the machine count. This could prompt disputes for officials who are required to certify a final vote and create even more voter confusion if inconsistent results are announced, he said.

With the interest in hand counting in Nevada, the secretary of state’s office created regulations that dictate how to conduct hand counting, such as a requirement for bipartisan teams. Still, there are questions about whether the rules are enforceable. Arizona law does not provide any guidance on when or how a hand count could happen, Hebert, of the secretary of state’s office, said.

Marra, who oversees ballot tabulating and Election Day procedures for the county, said she doesn’t know much about the exact proposal, but she has concerns about hand-counting all ballots, including “time to count 50 races on 50,000 ballots, people, location, security of ballots, cost, etc. All the things other states have encountered and Maricopa for their audit.” Those factors led Marra to estimate the hand count would take 2,500 hours total.

Marra said she’s focused on trying to conduct a safe, secure, and accurate election and “won’t be distracted by outside influences.” She said Judd asked her to go to the work session Tuesday, but declined to say whether she will attend.

English, the Democrat on the board, said the other supervisors appear to be entertaining the idea for political reasons.

“I’m not sure who they are trying to satisfy,” she said. “I’m satisfied with the way we do it. The election process is good. We follow it to the letter and we have a very strong election.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Push for hand-counting ballots overlooks needs of disabled voters

2022-09-26T10:15:00+00:00

A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s weekly newsletter. Sign up here.

Hi, y’all,

Hand-marked paper ballots. Have you heard about them?

Because it looks like folks are finding out they exist for the first time.

Very Serious People across the country — in Texas, Arizona, Kansas, Iowa, Utah, and elsewhere — are insisting counties stop using voting machines and tabulators, instead casting and counting all ballots by hand. It is, I’m told, a panacea to every problem facing the American election system, will ensure super easy voting and fast counting, and probably cure the common cold.

Obviously, all of that is incorrect (and we’ve written before about how the same folks insisting on hand counts haven’t bothered to reconcile that with the completely incompatible push for faster results). But it’s a mindset that seems to have gripped a large part of the country — the people who fundamentally distrust elections and technology. In pushing this, it’s clear proponents simply do not see the existence of disabled voters or their need for dignity in the voting process.

“All the handicapped people I know prefer paper and they’ve told me that,” Dan Rogers, chairman of the Potter County, Texas, Republican Party, told me late last year, saying that people he knew simply didn’t “trust” technology. And since then, a ton of people have gotten on board with this strange concept, which appears to be inspired as much by nostalgia for simpler times as faulty assumptions of increased security.

And some candidates for public office are pushing the false idea that your vote doesn’t count until you see someone count it. By hand.

“Your vote hasn’t counted for decades,” Republican nominee for Nevada secretary of state, Jim Marchant, said in a debate this year. “You haven’t elected anybody. The people that are in office have been selected. You haven’t had a choice.”

He’s taken his pitch for hand-counting ballots on the road, presenting the ideas to at least four counties in Nevada. In March, Nye County commissioners voted 5-0 to adopt hand counted ballots. Marchant is a member of a group of candidates who advocate such beliefs. They call themselves the “America First” coalition.

It’s a shortsighted and simplistic view of our voting system, where more than 90 percent of voters are already casting a paper ballot even if that paper ballot has been marked by a machine. About 70 percent of Americans cast ballots that are marked by hand. True hand counting only happens, the Washington Post finds, in a tiny percentage of precincts — mostly in small New England towns where votes are tabulated at the township level. American Samoa — with just over 16,000 registered voters and only three counting jurisdictions — counts entirely by hand. I don’t envy them, even with such a small number of registered voters.

Despite the facts showing otherwise, those advocating hand counting of ballots believe it to be common, tested, and foolproof. “We are proposing a proof-tested system, not a wild new idea that sounds good and that we merely hope works,” the group Secure Vote Utah writes.

As you, reader of this newsletter, must know by now, 100 percent hand-casted, hand-counted elections are a no-good, very bad idea that is absolutely not “proof-tested,” whatever that means in this case. There’s no sense in reinventing the wheel here. A whole bunch of articles and studies have already explained why.

Instead, I want to focus on one issue: that the movement for all hand-cast, hand-counted paper ballots erases the people who — because of physical disabilities, intellectual differences, or a host of other challenges — find it difficult or impossible to cast a paper ballot by hand. The disability community has, for decades, attempted to make its voice heard in election circles, and the rise of fervent advocacy of paper ballots shows how much work we all must do to ensure that happens.

Ballot marking devices with accessibility features allow individuals who cannot hand-mark a ballot to vote without help, in a truly anonymous fashion. Conspiracy theories around the security of these machines not only decrease confidence in the system as a whole, but make it impossible for these individuals to participate fully and equitably in democracy.

I routinely encounter people who respond to this by saying, “Fine, we’ll keep BMDs for them, then. Everyone else should hand-mark their ballots.” “Them” is telling here: These are voters, just the same, who shouldn’t be shuttled to a little-used machine the poll worker has not been trained to use because they are unable to participate in the same way as other voters. The ballots used by these machines would look far different than other ballots cast in the same precinct, eliminating the ability of these votes to remain truly anonymous.

Anyone who says differently is simply incorrect.

Casting an anonymous ballot — which requires a voter to be alone, in a booth, making their selections independently and without assistance — should not be a privilege for the abled. It should be the norm for everyone.

Back Then

While most associate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with making voting more inclusive for voters of different races, it also contained provisions protecting the rights of disabled people. This was the first federal law that established that a voter with disabilities could receive assistance from a person of their choice. Subsequent laws refined and expanded the rights owed to these voters. Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984 established a requirement that polling locations be accessible to those with disabilities. If they could not be made accessible, voters had to be provided with another means of voting on Election Day. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, known as the “Motor Voter” law, was the first to require that public-assistance offices that primarily serve people with disabilities must provide opportunities for voter registration. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 required that every polling location have at least one accessible voting system for people with disabilities, and made clear that the voting option provided to such voters must not differ in terms of opportunities for participation or expectation of privacy.

New From Votebeat

As the midterms approach, the Michigan secretary of state’s office has found itself repeatedly defending the state’s election system against local clerks, a handful of whom allowed unauthorized access to their tabulators last year. Experts say the clearest vulnerability facing Michigan are such insider threats, which the secretary of state has little ability to proactively prevent, and at least one clerk is continuing to make false claims about the state’s voting machines. Oralandar Brand-Williams reports for Votebeat Michigan on the ways in which the state is trying to ensure security of its election equipment.

In the weeks leading up to August’s primary election, ballot drop boxes were getting a bad rap on the right. But despite all the rhetoric, plenty of Republicans across the state still used both mail ballots and drop boxes. A Votebeat analysis of data provided by multiple counties shows ballot drop boxes remain a popular voting option for all Arizonans, including in Republican-dominated areas, Rachel Leingang reports for Votebeat Arizona.

About a dozen activists demanding responses to conspiracy theories about election integrity this week disrupted what is typically an uneventful public testing of voting machines ahead of an election in Hays County, Natalia Contreras reports for Votebeat Texas.

Despite months of rancor in Tarrant County over the viability of voting machines and the accuracy of ballot counting, a test held Friday allowing members of the public to test the system themselves was sparsely attended. Tarrant County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia held Friday’s public test to address the concern that county-run testing would reach a predetermined conclusion. He hoped that allowing people to test the machines themselves would allow them to trust the results. The lack of participation was disappointing for Garcia, who has been attempting to address the concerns of these critics for months. Read the joint coverage from Fort Worth Reports and Votebeat Texas.

In Other Voting News

Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist who lobbied state lawmakers to overturn the results of the 2020 election, has agreed to an interview with the House panel investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The committee is interested in communications between Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and lawyer John Eastman, who promoted the discredited theory that Vice President Mike Pence could block certification of the 2020 election.
In a partisan vote last week, the U.S. House endorsed legislation to overhaul the Electoral Count Act, century-old legislation which supporters of President Donald Trump attempted to exploit to stop certification of the 2020 election. Only nine Republicans supported the measure. The U.S. Senate is considering its own version of legislation to do the same thing, and the two versions would have to be reconciled. Both versions of the legislation would make clear that the role of the vice president in the certification of elections is purely ministerial.
Michigan lawmakers and the governor’s office are negotiating over allowing some preprocessing of mail ballots, potentially in time for November’s election, Michigan Live reports. The state is one of 12 that doesn’t permit election officials to process mail ballots before Election Day, slowing election results.
The Montana Supreme Court has reinstated a block on state laws passed last year that would end same-day registration and place new restrictions on the forms of ID that can be used to vote in the state, Montana Public Radio reports. Tribes, Native American advocacy groups, and youth advocacy groups had sued to block the new laws, arguing they disproportionately burdened tribal and young voters.
NPR talked to veterans of the civil rights movement about the similarities they see with today. “The notion that in 2020s we would still be fighting over voting rights just didn’t really occur to me,” said one. “But here we are.”

Elections can be fast, cheap, and accurate ... but not all at the same time.

2022-08-15T10:31:00+00:00

A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s weekly newsletter. Sign up here.

I’ve heard it since I started covering this beat: Everyone wants elections to be fast, accurate, and cheap. Pick two of those. You can’t have three.

Some candidates haven’t gotten the message.

For example, Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for governor of Arizona, declared that Arizonans should know who the winner is “when they go to bed on election night.”

That’s interesting. Because Lake, who is now running against current Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, wants to eliminate mail voting in a state where it’s wildly popular, instead requiring voters to cast ballots in local precincts on Election Day, and also get rid of the machines used to tabulate ballots. Instead, Lake advocates a switch to hand-counting paper ballots.

In theory, Lake could push for all votes to be cast on a single day and counted that very night by the hands of thousands and thousands of sleepy volunteers. For that to be remotely possible, though, counties would need to spend untold millions of dollars on staffing. It’s, as the Washington Post has written, a terrible idea.

Lake’s own primary results are an example of how accurate results take time. Lake was trailing her opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson, for most of the night last Tuesday. While behind, she whipped up voter fraud conspiracy theories before quickly changing her tune when she took the lead as absentee ballots were counted. Her team later called it a “blowout.” She won by more than 4 percentage points. Ironically, it evokes the 2020 pattern — Trump up, before votes cast by mailed ballots helped take it for Biden — that conspiracy theorizers have deemed suspicious. Given Lake was clearly laying the groundwork to allege the election results were fraudulent in some way, if this had played out to her opponent’s benefit, she’d be questioning the results. Instead, satisfied with her victory, Lake has celebrated the results.

The expectation of instant results is irrational. It stems from how elections were conducted in the 2000s, when counties were able to boop-beep-boop their way to results without counting a single physical ballot, given the popularity of machines that electronically record votes. Counting paper ballots takes longer. In addition, Arizona’s legal deadline for counties to canvass the results isn’t until Aug. 16, and state officials don’t certify final results until Aug. 22.

Nevertheless, “ain’t gonna be no concession speech coming from this guy,” said Republican secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, who has made plenty of his own fact-free claims of fraud. “I’m going to demand a 100 percent hand count if there’s the slightest hint that there’s an impropriety.”

Finchem won, and has not since requested any recount despite repeatedly suggesting malfeasance throughout the race.

It appears that the real test of whether an election is legitimate was, for these candidates, whether or not they won.

Back Then

Vote counting has always been, well, difficult. Inventor Jacob H. Meyers invented a lever-operated “Automatic Booth,” which was popular from around 1910 to around 1980, dominating around 80 percent of the market. Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa, said the public trusted these gigantic machines “because of their sheer physicality.” For voters, they were easy to use: Voters pulled a lever for each race, or a single lever for straight-ticket voting. But behind the scenes, things were more complex. (Sound familiar?) The more than 200 levers on the face of the machine were prevented from fully recording a vote until all of the races were accounted for, in the event a voter changed their mind. The machines used no electricity, and had to be manually linked to each race for the straight ticket vote. They were famously fragile — even a pencil tip could be used to affect the mechanics of the machines, preventing counting or changing votes.

In Other Voting News

A Reuters analysis found that a team working with Matthew DePerno, the Republican candidate for state attorney general in Michigan, gained unauthorized access to a voting tabulator in Richfield Township, one of a series of incidents under investigation by current state Attorney General Dana Nessel, his opponent. Nessel is now seeking an outside prosecutor.

Pennsylvania election officials told a court they mistakenly certified the results of the May 17 primary election in Butler County, even though the count didn’t include undated mail ballots in its official total. The state is suing three other counties over the same issue, but said “human error” led it to omit Butler County from the suit.

In scattered, small-scale instances, conspiracy theorists and so-called election integrity activists are trying to organize observers to monitor drop boxes during elections, seeking evidence of fraud. Election officials are concerned about the potential for voter intimidation if the trend continues, the New York Times reports.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, says a photo of an unmonitored drop box in Broward County should be investigated by the state’s new elections police unit. A new Florida law made unattended ballot boxes illegal. Broward County officials said a supervisor was present but was cropped out of the photo, and that all ballot boxes are being monitored as required by the law.

A nonprofit associated with retiring GOP U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a member of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol, is the latest to announce a new training program for prospective candidates and election workers.

Facebook owner Meta has recently said less publicly about its election misinformation safeguards despite looming threats to November midterms, reports the AP. The company had published more than 30 statements on how it would combat election misinformation between 2018 and 2020, yet it has only published one this year. Meta says elections remain a priority.

Texas election officials are taking steps, including new ballot inserts with instructions, to help voters navigate new ID requirements for mail ballots, in hopes of lowering rejection rates, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.