The other one to keep an eye on.
Eastland County Republicans voted last fall to ditch electronic voting equipment and instead hand count all of their primary ballots. They’ll be using paper poll books to check in voters, and expect voters to hand mark their choices on paper ballots rather than using a ballot-marking device. And instead of having a joint primary with the Democrats, as they’ve done for years, Republicans have chosen to split everything: staff, equipment and materials. Democrats in the county are still planning to use the electronic voting equipment to cast and to tabulate their ballots.
Hand counting is no small endeavor. Election officials and voting experts have warned that hand counting large numbers of ballots is expensive, labor-intensive, slower to produce results, and more prone to human error than machine tabulation. But some Republicans across Texas have backed the method in recent years as President Donald Trump and others have pushed unsupported claims about the reliability of voting machines.
In Texas, political parties decide at the county level how their primaries will be administered. Other county Republican parties, including Dallas, considered hand-counting, but ultimately decided against it, worried about cost, finding enough workers, and a state law that requires results to be reported within 24 hours. Failing to do so could result in a misdemeanor charge.
The only two counties planning to hand count this year are Eastland and Gillespie. In 2024, Gillespie Republicans hand counted more than 8,000 ballots. That endeavour took nearly 24 hours and led to errors in tallies that officials later had to fix. Gillespie Republicans this month scaled back their plans and said they will only hand count ballots cast on Election Day because, officials said, they weren’t able to recruit enough workers to count ballots cast during early voting, which ends Friday.
Eastland’s plan, meanwhile, has created major logistical problems, Temi Nichols, the county’s elections administrator, said.
Eastland County has used the state’s countywide polling place program — which allows voters to cast ballots at any polling place in the county on Election Day — since at least 2013. In addition, the local political parties had for years agreed to host joint primaries. Both of these methods allowed the county to save money by staffing and equipping fewer polling locations that all voters could use.
But Republicans’ decision to hand count and hold a separate primary from Democrats means that won’t be the case this year, since both political parties have to agree in order for the county to use countywide polling places. Voters casting primary ballots must do so at their local precincts. In addition, the county is struggling to comply with federal accessibility laws requiring that each polling location has at least one accessible voting machine available for voters who need it. That hasn’t been an issue in the past because both parties used the machines for all voters.
But Nichols said the county only has enough accessible voting equipment for the Democratic sites and three of the nine Republican precincts. Her attempts to attain more from neighboring counties or by leasing them from the manufacturer have so far been unsuccessful. As of Tuesday, Nichols told Votebeat she was continuing to seek help from the state and the manufacturer in an attempt to comply.
“I’m just trying to help both parties have an election. I don’t want to be in national news because Eastland County didn’t do this right,” Nichols said.
The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment on whether the lack of such equipment would be a violation of the law by the county or the party. The state plans to dispatch election inspectors to Eastland to monitor the election, Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the office, said. The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
For her part, [Eastland County GOP Chair Robin] Hayes told Votebeat she’s aware there aren’t enough voting machines to have one available for disabled voters at all of the Republican precincts. When asked if she was concerned about potential legal challenges, she said, “Well, the Lord will have to prevail. It’s not intentional,” and added that voters who need assistance can request it from an election worker or any person the voter chooses.
“This country has too many laws anyway,” she said.
[…]
Nichols has been stressing over the Republicans’ hand-count plans for weeks. She has watched hours of online training by the Texas Secretary of State’s Office on how to conduct the hand count and what state law requires.
Appointed to the job last summer, this will be the first major election she and her deputy, Donna Fagan, will help the local parties run.
“If this doesn’t work on election night at midnight, am I supposed to step in and save the day? I really don’t know if I can do that,” Nichols said.
[David] Hullum, the county judge, also expressed concern. If there are issues he said, “Everyone is going to look at the county for answers, not the Republican party … We’re going to end up getting blamed for the whole deal.”
See here for more about the scaled-back plans in Gillespie County, and here for the same in Dallas County, where the hand counting is forcing Democrats there to use precinct voting instead of voting centers on Election Day. Eastland is small enough, and the number of Democratic voters is small enough (it was less than 100 at the time this story was written) that Dems there were able to run their primary separately. But there will be a non-trivial number of Republicans voting – in 2022, 3,164 ballots were cast in the Governor’s race, so that’s going to take a lot of people power. And the GOP Chair there is…let’s just say not the most reality-based person you’ll ever hear about. I have a lot of sympathy for the elections admin there, I sure hope they escape any damage if this is a total cluster. I wish those folks and County Judge Hullum all the best.
Calhoun County Republicans also hand-counting Republican ballots in the primary this year. Seems to stem from a distrust of machines. If it is deemed successful they plan to do it in the general election.
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