A GOP primary in Texas has sparked concerns over attempts to move away from electronic 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.

  • @ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
    24•9 months ago

    It isn’t the paper ballots that are the problem, it’s the hand counting. Many states use paper ballots which are then counted by electronic tallying machines. This method gives results quickly and has the paper ballots to be counted manually if there are discrepancies. Hand counting is slower, less accurate, and just as vulnerable to malicious actors.

      • @IphtashuFitz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6•9 months ago

        These types of ballots don’t have chads. They have circles you fill out with a pencil or black marker, very similar to standardized tests like SAT’s. After you fill it out you feed it into an optical scanner that tallies the votes.

        At the end of the election officials simply add up the results from each optical scanner. And if there’s a legitimate concern about the counts, or simply a desire to audit a machine then you just pull the ballots from one or more machines, count the results, and compare those with what the scanner counted.

        So you have an easily audited paper trail and the ability to audit small sets of ballots/machines rather than hand counting everything.

          • @Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
            2•9 months ago

            Brooks Brothers riot and the SC otherthrew that election. I remember when that happened and I only years later learning about the riots. For some reason, I just remember people making Chad jokes.

            • @AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
              2•9 months ago

              That was my first presidential election as a voting age adult. I was 20 that year. Before the DC sniper was caught, while they were doing their thing, I had surmised that they were taking potshots at The SCOTUS for overturning the legitimate election, and forcing Dubbaya on us.