Texas Governor Greg Abbott is considering new elections in the state's Harris County after it was discovered that a shortage of ballot paper was more widespread than officials had estimated it to be.
On Tuesday, Abbott said the shortage was so much larger than initially believed that it "may have altered the outcome of elections."
"It may necessitate new elections," the governor tweeted. "It WILL necessitate new LAWS that prevent Harris Co. from ever doing this again."
An analysis of equipment and voter turnout records conducted by local news outlet KHOU 11 found that 121 voting centers lacked sufficient ballot paper needed to cover voter turnout—more than double the number of centers that Harris County estimated to be affected. The county had previously said 46 to 68 centers ran out of their allotted ballot paper.
In a statement sent to Newsweek, the Texas secretary of state's office said that it was first notified of the alleged improprieties in Harris County shortly after Election Day in 2022 and that the information was referred to the Texas attorney general's office and the Harris County district attorney's office for investigation.
Because Harris County is already subject to additional post-elections audits, the secretary of state's office said that "we have been collecting even more information to ultimately provide the public with greater clarity on the root causes of the issues witnessed in Harris County during the 2022 General Election."
The Harris County Elections Administration released a preliminary report last month acknowledging the difficulties on Election Day, but said that a full analysis will take months to complete.
It did not provide an explanation for why voting centers ran out of ballot paper.
Abbott's call to legislate new measures to prevent a paper shortage on Election Day was applauded by other Republicans, like the Harris County Republican Party (HCRP) and Arizona's former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who called on election officials in her state to do the same.
"Your turn, @maricopacounty," Lake's campaign tweeted on Wednesday.
Lake, who lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes, has continued to refuse to accept the results of the November election, even after she exhausted all her viable legal options to overturn the results of the election. In December, a lower court judge ruled against Lake's lawsuit seeking to be declared the winner of the gubernatorial election.
However, Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor at the University of Houston, told Newsweek that while the elections in Texas have problems, calling for an election re-do would be "a dramatic and largely unprecedented step considering the scope of the mistakes made in Harris County."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
