Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called for a new election in Harris County, Texas, after ballot issues were more widespread than officials had estimated them to be.
In response to an analysis that found there was a ballot paper shortage that was far larger than previously reported, the governor said that “it’s so big it may have altered the outcome of elections.
“It may necessitate new elections,” Abbott also wrote. “It WILL necessitate new LAWS that prevent Harris Co. from ever doing this again.”
Abbott, a Republican, was responding to a KHOU-11 analysis suggesting that Harris County allotted ballot paper packets that were enough for 600 ballots to each of the county’s 121 voting centers. However, the analysis found that the total votes that were cast exceeded that amount by upwards of hundreds of ballots in some instances.
Previously, Harris County had said that 46 to 68 centers ran out of their allotted ballot paper. The county’s elections administration released a report last month that had admitted there were problems during the Nov. 8 midterms, but it said that a full report will take months to complete.
Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum, responding to KHOU on Tuesday, said that “the implications of your article cast the cloud into the community that those locations ran out of paper.”
“There were over 4 million sheets of paper in the street on election day,” he also remarked to the station, suggesting there was no shortage.
Harris County Refutes Governor
A spokesperson for Harris County’s elections agency, Nadia A. Hakim, told The Epoch Times on Friday that the KHOU news story “is, at best, misleading” and disputed Abbott’s assertion.
“One of several glaring failures of the story is that it compares turnout numbers at individual voting locations from 2018 (before countywide voting was implemented) to this past November’s election (when voters could vote at any location in the county),” Hakim added. “This apples to kale comparison never clarifies whether any site requested or received any additional paper. Precinct-level turnout in 2018 is not comparable to countywide voting centers in 2022. This is a critical mistake in analysis.”
