Republicans’ Election Riddled With Errors After Hand Counting Ballots

Republican efforts to hand count ballots in a seemingly low-profile Texas county primary election has led to a number of errors.

Gillespie County Republicans, led by Chairman Bruce Campbell, decided months ago to hand-count more than 8,000 ballots for the county GOP primary on March 5. Campbell then declared the results completely accurate and certified before, less than an hour after that certification, reversing course and saying discrepancies were found.

“It’s my mistake for not catching that,” Cambell said on Thursday while sitting inside the county election administration office. “I can’t believe I did that.”

The kerfuffle over ballot counting comes after a November rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump was solidified in primaries last week.

Criticisms from Republicans over numerous voting measures have ramped up since Trump was indicted on four counts in August by the Department of Justice over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election with the DOJ saying it led to the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

The former president has continued to claim, without providing any evidence, that the election was stolen from him via widespread voter fraud. Trump has pled not guilty and has said that the case against him is politically motivated.

While the GOP primary in the Texas county was a small primary and the discrepancies did not ultimately change the outcome of the race, the county party had to fix a series of errors in the results reported from almost every precinct between the election and the canvass last Thursday.

The number of reported errors, however, has led to concerns over hand counting ballots as the Lone Star State only requires partial recounts for electronically cast ballots and has no language in state law requiring the local GOP to recount hand ballots or audit the results.

Campbell has defended the hand counting of the ballots and deemed the move a success despite the errors, saying that he has full confidence that the tallying of the votes was accurate. He said that the party will not voluntarily conduct an audit or recount to verify the results.

Newsweek has reached out to both the Gillespie County Republican Party and the Gillespie County Democratic Party via email for comment.

The Republican push for hand-counted ballots has continued to emerge as the party criticizes a number of electronic voting systems, linking them to claims that the 2020 election was stolen via widespread voter fraud.

One of the major proponents of paper ballots is Trump supporter and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has been an outspoken critic of electronic voting machines. He has said he wants U.S. elections to be held using paper ballots. Lindell has also used his money to pay for $500 wireless monitoring devices he says are designed to detect whether voting machines are connected to the internet. The legitimacy of the monitoring devices has been disputed.

Other high-profile Republicans like Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, wants the Supreme Court to upend how Americans vote by declaring it unconstitutional for voters to cast their ballots through electronic voting systems.

Attorneys for Lake and former Arizona GOP State Rep. Mark Finchem filed a petition with the Supreme Court on Thursday, asking the court to revive their 2022 lawsuit challenging the use of electronic voting machines in the state. The suit was slammed by experts and judges as “frivolous” at the time.

In the new filing, attorney Lawrence Joseph asked the Supreme Court to give the Arizona Republican Party a do-ever in light of new evidence that was not known when his clients first filed their claim, making it unable to be presented to a federal judge in Arizona. Joseph said he believes there is enough evidence to conclude that a new trial would result in a different outcome.