New: Republicans are suing and Democrats are calling for a full review after Harris County missed deadlines to have its votes tallied and failed to count about 10,000 ballots in its initial returns for the 2022 Texas primary election.
,” Leah Shah, the spokesperson, said in an email Tuesday. “We will address each allegation in court filings as appropriate.”
Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, Harris County elections have long been known for slow reporting of election results. More populous than 26 states, the county is Texas’ biggest and typically has the most votes to process. Voting materials, including ballot boxes, must also be transported across the county’s nearly 2,000 square miles back to its election headquarters.
That same morning, election workers filled out a new reconciliation form that counties are required to post at the end of election day vote counting to indicate any differences between the number of voters and the number of ballots counted. The figures are considered preliminary and can change as election information and votes, including late-arriving mail-in ballots and provisional ballots, are verified.
“The 10,000 mail ballots were scanned into our central scanning system within the 24-hour period after Election Night,” Shah said in the Tuesday email. “Unfortunately, due to the late hour and miscommunication between staff members, the transfer of these votes to our tally system did not occur within the 24-hour period.”
“We have been completely transparent in our desire to dig into the details of what went wrong and identify how to make corrections moving forward,” Harris County Democratic Party Chair Odus Evbagharu said in a statement Monday. “We continue to believe a thorough review of election processes is required.”