Let's talk about Texas republicans backtracking on hand counting votes.... - Belle of the Ranch

[TexasTowelie]

Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about Texas Republicans backtracking on hand counting votes.

Dallas County Republicans have been laying the groundwork to hand count ballots in the March 3rd, 2026, Republican primary for months. It's been a desire of the party for quite some time, but Dallas County Republicans decided against hand counting in 2023. The county has 1.5 million voters, and the state has rules about reporting results quickly. But then the new chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party, Allen West, committed to the idea. Recently he said “let's not forget this is the way it used to be done,” then he talked about how when he was in the Army they didn't take the excuse of anything being too hard so the party set the goal of hand counting the primary and started raising money.

Well, now it turns out that it is in fact too hard. A statement from West says “a smart responsible leader always assesses risks and ascertains the means by which they can be mitigated. It is no different as we prepare for the 2026 Dallas County Republican primary election.” You know it's going to be good when a politician starts their press release by calling themselves smart and responsible.

It goes on…{West} “On Monday, December 29, I received a call from our hand count task force lead regarding several risks that did not have a clear path for mitigation. These issues involved financial reimbursement, logistics, and personnel. The two most concerning areas were logistics and personnel. The logistics challenges involved the demand for additional tables and chairs as well as ballot printing due to the high number of races. This leads to the second issue personnel. We are currently tapped out at approximately 1,300 to 1,500 individuals for hand counting. With only 63 days until the election, that number is woefully short of what is required. The greatest risk would be to continue without having trained, qualified, and ready counters, which would place our election judges in an untenable legal position.”

The logistical, personnel, and financial concerns have been known for years. They're the primary reason this push fails in large jurisdictions every time it comes up. Another issue is that doing hand counting requires the use of precincts rather than countywide voting locations. The personnel manning the precincts must be paid and they'd have to finish counting within 24 hours of the polls closing.

Back in December, West said the party had raised more than $400,000 and recruited over a thousand people to support their now abandoned hand count effort. It's worth remembering that the hand count push on the Republican side of the aisle largely stems from debunked claims about the 2020 election. Yep, the country is still dealing with the fallout from all the bad information that circulated at the time. A high profile backtrack like this will do quite a bit to cool some of the claims and rhetoric. But if history is any guide, realistically, we'll be dealing with misinformation from 2020 for decades. Once these claims take hold, they take a really long time to go away.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.