Some lessons need to be learned the hard way.
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.”
This story refers to Votebeat’s previous reporting on electoral dysfunction in Gillespie County, and you should read those as well along with the rest of this one. One thing this story makes clear is that any county party that attempts this extreme foolishness, which will take longer to do and cost more money and require more resources, will not get any kind of slack from the Secretary of State:
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.”
Hand count and find out. I cannot wait to hear about county parties basically bankrupting themselves this way. Sure, there will be plenty of people out there with more money than brains or sense willing to bail them out. It’s still going to be a problem.
One more point to note is that this story suggests there would be “more than 3,000 ballots expected to be cast in the primary” in Gillespie. I think that’s an underestimate, as there were nearly 6,000 ballots cast in the 2020 GOP primary there. A quick look at the SOS filings page suggests there will be at least ten or eleven contested races: President, Senate, Railroad Commissioner, four of the six statewide benches, County Attorney, Sheriff, Tax Assessor, and for some voters a County Commissioner. Imagine how much fun it will be if one or more of those results are disputed, especially if that happens after the state deadline for reporting the results in the first place. This is me rubbing my hands in anticipation. You do you, Gillespie County.
(So, um, when will the state intervene in Gillespie County to ensure the integrity of their election results? Asking for a friend.)
On something like this, all you can do is grab a cold beer, set up your lawn chair, and watch the dumpster fire burn. Hee-haw.
I doubt just one touch of the hot stove is going to teach these people anything.
Also train your binoculars on Shasta Co, CA and Ottawa Co MI for more extreme RWNJ dysfunction.
I will say, that last line teaches me to not be mid-coffee-sip when I read these …well done.