Oh, Gillespie County. You rascals, you.
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.”
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.
[…]
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.
See here, here, and here for the background. I got nothin’, because honestly, what can one even say? Good luck, Dallas.
How much do they pay? Are overnight expenses covered? (insert laugh emoji)
Ya know, schools have used scantrons for years & no one carped about it.
“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.”
‘For whatever reason’ ?
I’ll take short term memory loss and clown car shit show for $500, Alek .