Gillespie County TX GOP moved to count ballots by hand in its primary. It had to fix errors in the results reported from almost every precinct

[essentialsaltes]

They counted primary ballots by hand. Now a Texas county Republican party says they found errors.​

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.

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.

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.

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 found he made mistakes, including one race with more votes than voters.]

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.

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.”

 

[iluvatar5150]

I appreciate the Republicans’ pro-worker stance in resisting the increasing encroachment of automation and AI, but maybe they could pick a different place to start.

 

[Bradskii]

Maybe they should have two big bowls and they could put a pebble in one for every Republican vote and a pebble in the other for Democrat votes. Maybe scratch R on one with a stick and D on the other.

 

[Bradskii]

I appreciate the Republicans’ pro-worker stance in resisting the increasing encroachment of automation and AI, but maybe they could pick a different place to start.

I remember when CAD (computer aided draughting) was just coming in. I tried to persuade the company I was working for to embrace the new technology. I told them that to show the client what we were going to build I was sticking some paper to a board and marking lines on it with a pen. I was effectively using the same method as the ancient Egyptians used to build the pyramids 5,000 years ago. Scratching lines on papyrus with a stylus. Maybe we ought to move on.

They didn't. So I did.