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Republicans in Dallas County, one of Texas’ largest voting jurisdictions, say they want to count ballots in their coming March primary by hand, if they can afford to, a change that could delay the reporting of election results and have far-reaching consequences for all of the county’s 1.5 million voters.
The decision could force Dallas Democrats, as well as Republicans, to return to casting ballots at their assigned local precincts, rather than countywide vote centers, which would require finding scores of additional polling locations and hundreds more workers. It could also vastly increase the cost of holding both primaries, an increase that the parties would have to be prepared to cover on their own.
Cost is one reason why Dallas County Republicans decided in 2023 against hand-counting ballots. At the time, Jennifer Stoddard Hajdu, then the county GOP chair, estimated the party would need more than $1 million to hand-count the more than 70,000 ballots cast in the 2024 primary.
Two years later, Hajdu is still skeptical. “I just think there are so many parts to this that it’s going to be very difficult to get it done,” she said.
But Allen West, a former Florida congressman and Army veteran who is the new chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party, said that the size of the challenge shouldn’t deter the party. He said that party members distrust electronic voting equipment, and that the county’s problems with some of its electronic pollbooks last year contributed to the renewed push to hand-count ballots.
The Dallas County Republican Party’s executive committee voted in September to hand-count primary ballots, and set a goal to raise $500,000 to get it done, West said.
“Let’s not forget this is the way it used to be done,” West said, referring to hand-counts and precinct-based voting. In the Army, he said, “we don’t take that excuse of anything being too hard.”
Other counties consider hand-counting ballots
Calls for hand-counting ballots have grown in recent years amid skepticism and misinformation campaigns about machines used for voting and tabulating ballots. But experts agree and studies show the method is time-consuming, costly, less accurate, and less secure than using machines.
In Gillespie County, in the Hill Country about 80 miles west of Austin, Republicans spent months training hundreds of workers to hand-count ballots in 2024. Republicans also designed ballots that couldn’t be tabulated by machines, and paid the printing costs.
On Election Day that year, 350 workers spent nearly 24 hours counting more than 8,000 ballots. In 12 out of 13 precincts, the party found errors in their tallies. And since state law does not require a post-election audit of ballots that are counted by hand, those results have yet to be checked for accuracy.
Even so, Gillespie County Republicans are planning to hand-count their primary ballots in 2026.
In Austin, Travis County Republicans hand-counted 2,000 mail-in ballots in 2024, which was a fraction of the total ballots cast. The group reported discrepancies in its own count that had to be corrected. Officials there told Votebeat that they have yet to decide if they’ll do so again in 2026.
In Williamson County, north of Austin, Republicans considered hand-counting for the 2026 primary, but have now decided against it. The county is home to about 450,000 registered voters.
“Once the logistics started to get fleshed out a little bit more, that’s when reality hit,” said Michelle Evans, the Williamson County Republican Party chair. Evans said requirements in state law mean it’s difficult to do a hand-count “without an extreme amount of manpower and a budget that we may not be able to fulfill.”
How much more would a hand-count cost?
It’s up to county parties to decide how their primaries will be administered. But by law, in order to use countywide vote centers for the primary, both parties have to agree on it. If one party wants to use precinct-based voting, then the other must do the same.
And by law, any hand-count of ballots has to be done at each of the county’s polling locations.
Dallas County Republicans have shared polling locations and election workers with Democrats for the past two primaries, but aren’t planning to do so next year. According to the Dallas County Elections Department, neither party has signed a contract agreeing to either a joint or split primary or specified the voting method they’ll use. Dallas County Democratic Chair Kardal Coleman said Democrats are still considering their options.
West said his party estimates it’ll need to secure at least 360 polling locations to manage a hand-count. That means the party would have to recruit and train at least 2,160 workers — at least three to manage each polling site and at least three more to hand-count ballots at each site.
The cost for election workers alone at the Republican polling sites would amount to more than $300,000. That includes workers’ $12-per-hour wage for a 12-hour shift on Election Day, plus 12 hours of pay for the teams counting up the votes on ballots that are expected to have more than two dozen races on them. Any time beyond that would cost even more.
That dollar figure doesn’t include the cost of materials, including ballot boxes, voting booths, paper and ballot printing costs.
At that rate, the cost of hand-counting the GOP primary ballots would likely outstrip the $500,000 the party says it can afford to spend.
State may not absorb the added costs
The state, which reimburses local parties for some of their primary election expenses, has already warned county party chairs that it won’t absorb higher-than-normal costs for the primary compared with previous years, even if there’s a switch from a joint primary to separate party primaries. That means county parties that decide to hand-count would have to prepare to cover these extraordinary costs out of their own pockets.
The Legislature allocated about $21 million in funding for the 2026 primary, and the state expects an additional $5 million from candidate filing fees. However, those funds also help cover expenses such as postage for voter registration, operational costs at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, and other administrative costs.
Texas Secretary of State officials have also warned county chairs that by law, election results have to be in within 24 hours after the polls close. Failing to do so could result in a misdemeanor charge.
West defended his party’s vote for hand-counting as an effort to “return to a system of voting that was the successful standard for decades.”
Dallas County has actually used some kind of machines for voting and vote counting for most of the past century, starting with mechanical lever machines in the 1930s and later punch cards and optical scan machines, said Bruce Sherbet, who served as the county’s election administrator from 1987 to 2011. He said it’s possible smaller jurisdictions such as cities and school districts may have hand-counted their ballots, but he couldn’t immediately identify any. Today’s voting machines tabulate votes electronically but use paper ballots for auditing purposes, and tabulating equipment is tested prior to and after an election for accuracy.
Reversing course by hand-counting, “is just completely irresponsible,” said Coleman, the Democratic Party chair. “I would hate to see the Republican Party do something that would ultimately harm voters, confuse the electorate, and change our process, which has shown and proven that it works for every voter in our county,” he said.
What the state is telling proponents of hand-counting
Paul Adams, the newly appointed Dallas County elections administrator, said the department’s goal will be to respect the parties’ legal right to determine how to run their primaries, and also make sure “that the voters are being protected and the voters are going to be getting the best possible service.”
Although there’s no explicit deadline for the parties to reach an agreement with the county, or decide whether they’ll run their primaries together or separately, there are deadlines looming.
Months before the March primary, the parties have to secure polling locations and sign any lease agreements for them. They have to hire and train election workers, design ballots, test equipment, and complete other administrative duties by January, when voters can start applying for a mail-in ballot.
At a gathering of hundreds of local party chairs in Austin last month, Christina Adkins, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office elections division director, reminded party chairs who might be skeptical of machine counts that hand-counting is already part of the election process.
To verify the accuracy of machine counts after every election, a bipartisan group of officials hand-count a sample of ballots — from 1% of precincts, or three precincts, whichever is greater — with races selected at random by the state. The process has been legally required for years.
If party chairs like the idea of a hand-count but find that it isn’t feasible, Adkins suggested that they consider getting involved in these post-election hand-count audits, which poll watchers are now allowed to attend. The results of the audit must also be posted on the county’s website.
“It is a way to get your community involved. It’s a way to validate the accuracy of your vote totals,” Adkins said. “I strongly encourage you all in this room as leaders in your community to participate in this.”
Evans, the Williamson County Republican chair, said party members in her county are opting for that route.
“The stakes are really high,” Evans said. “If we were to upend everything, go back to hand-marked paper ballots, a full hand-count, precinct-level, and the primary is complete chaos, then everyone is going to be left with the impression that none of this can be done.”
Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She’s based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at [email protected].
Disclosure: The Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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