There are supposed to be consequences for this. But will there be?
Calhoun County finished submitting its primary election results to the state Friday morning after county Republicans, who hand counted their primary ballots, missed a deadline in state law requiring them to submit early-voting and Election Day results to the county no later than 24 hours after polls closed, a county election official said.
Mary Ann Orta, the elections administrator in the South Texas county, which includes Victoria and Port Lavaca, and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office both confirmed the county GOP missed the deadline and its results were submitted to the state Friday morning. The results for county Democrats, who used electronic voting equipment to tabulate ballots, were submitted to the state not long after the polls closed on Tuesday night, Orta said.
In Texas, political parties decide at the county level how their primaries will be administered, and Calhoun Republicans chose to hand count ballots this year, including those cast early and at 11 Republican precincts on Election Day, a labor-intensive process.
In a text message responding to questions from Votebeat, Calhoun County GOP Chair Russell Cain said the party “would like to thank the Calhoun County Elections Office and the Texas Secretary of State for their continual support and guidance during the Republican Primary Handcount. We had about a hundred people devoted to this endeavor and appreciate their dedication and resilience throughout the counting process.”
He did not immediately respond to questions about exactly when workers completed counting, or about the missed deadline to report results. There were 3,153 ballots cast in the county’s GOP primary, according to data posted on the Texas secretary of state’s website Friday.
Failure to provide results by the 24-hour deadline is a class B misdemeanor, which carries fines of up to $2,000 and the potential for jail time. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment on how the law is enforced, or the potential legal implications of the party’s failure to meet the deadline. But Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the agency, referred Votebeat to a section of the Texas election code that says the canvassing authority — in this case, the county party chair and the party’s executive committee — can seek a court order to force the delivery of records and supervision of the counting process. However, local prosecutors generally have the authority to investigate and prosecute any election crimes or violations, according to the election code.
Orta did not have many answers Friday morning. She and her staff have been sleep-deprived since Tuesday, as they waited for all the information necessary to report results to the state.
“I’m exhausted and still trying to make heads or tails of everything we’ve got,” Orta said.
I did not have Calhoun County on my list of hand–counting miscreants. All of the others either managed to get their counts done in a sufficiently timely manner (how error-ridden they will prove to be remains unreported on) or had to abandon the effort. They still caused chaos and damage that may reverbate for some time, but no one in those counties is in legal jeopardy at this time. One must count that as a win, I suppose.
As to what may happen in Calhoun County, I have no idea. I haven’t gone looking for the hand count law, so I don’t know what its specifics are, or even who might be at risk of arrest and prosecution. One hopes it would be the party officials and not the local elections admins, since primaries are run by the parties, but give the state of elections law in Texas I’m not confident of that. The Calhoun County DA may well conclude that there’s nothing for them to do, and I feel even more confident that Ken Paxton is not going to try and bigfoot this one, since there are no Democrats for him to harass. So maybe no harm, no foul? I would not be surprised if everyone involved just decides to pretend this never happened.
Karma
Calhoun County voter here. I’m told Republicans trained 120 paid volunteers but only 80 showed up to work. I suspected they’d have a problem when they solicited high school students. The cause was suspicion of electronic voting machines and scanners, after a bad experience in the past where some ballots from a smaller town, maybe Port O’Connor, didn’t show up (I think). The worst part is that the Republican vallots were not scanned at all so the totals can’t be compared.