Tue. Mar 19th, 2024

From today’s The Guardian:

Volunteers in Tarrant county, Texas, are manually reviewing more than 300,000 ballots from the state’s 2020 Republican primary election, Votebeat reported last week. There’s no evidence of fraud or that the results were inaccurate in any way, but the ballots recently became open to public inspection and the group wants to see for themselves. John Raymond, a volunteer with the group conducting the effort, Tarrant County Citizens for Election Integrity, told Votebeat the effort was just a start. “A lot of people don’t have faith in our elections, so we’re just here counting, making sure that what the secretary of state’s numbers say are right,” he said.

It’s not clear, however, what exactly the group is looking for or how they’re doing it. At the elections office, volunteers are going through the ballots, comparing them to data on their laptop and occasionally holding them up to the light (it’s not clear what they’re looking for). The elections office, which is required to comply with the group’s request for public information, has had to provide space and supervision for the process.

It’s the kind of activity that Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who assisted Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, is encouraging citizens around the US to take up (it’s unclear if the Texas group is affiliated with her effort). There’s nothing wrong or unusual about concerned citizens wanting to check the results of an election. But there’s worry that shoddy methodology and misunderstandings will produce an impression that the election was stolen. That’s essentially what happened in Arizona, where a months-long review of the 2020 race produced no evidence the election was stolen, but those overseeing the review said they had several more questions. Election officials later debunked every single claim they made.

Read the complete story here.

By Editor