Texas Republicans in some counties are pushing to count ballots by hand in next year's primary
Republicans in at least a half-dozen counties in Texas are considering or have made plans to count ballots by hand in next March's primary elections, a move that's financially costly and could inject uncertainty into key contests.
Texas Republicans who are pushing for the shift argue that voting machines that normally handle the process are unreliable, a position President Donald Trump and his allies have been pushing for years, despite a lack of evidence. But voting experts and Democrats warn that hand-counting could result in errors, delays in final results and post-election litigation.
Texas tasks political parties, rather than local governments, with running Election Day voting in primaries, giving partisan officials unusual say over election administration. Democrats and Republicans in the state often administer elections jointly, outsourcing the job to the county election officials, and their expenses are reimbursed by the secretary of state.
But this time around, Republicans in some Texas counties want to run their elections on their own, planning to conduct them at the precinct level so they can hand-count ballots on Election Day.
According to interviews with party leaders and activists in Texas, Republicans in Dallas, Hays, Eastland and Gillespie counties have approved plans to hand-count ballots in next year’s primary. Orange County Republicans also approved plans over the summer to hand-count Election Day ballots, according to local media. And at least one other county, Denton, is considering a similar measure.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/texas-republicans-counties-are-pushing-count-ballots-hand-years-primar-rcna239342
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retired. He had to have been a Republican to keep his job in this county, but he seems to have been one of those old-school competent Republicans. The machines we were using was touch-screen, but it printed a paper ballot that you could review before dropping it in the final bin. I’m OK with that.
The new appointee took us back to paper with circles that needed to be filled in by hand. Not only that, these ballots are custom printed at a big machine when you check in—because people from any precinct can vote at any location.
I went during early voting and even though there were only a couple other voters in the room, I still had to stand and wait a bit for my ballot to print. “Gosh,” I thought, “how is that going to work for a big election?”
I did not have to wait long to find out. Even though this was a low turnout election since the only thing on the ballot in this county were constitutional amendments, Election Day was a clusterf**k here, with people standing in long lines coming out the door because of the wait for ballots to get printed.
Honestly. 