The Dallas County Republican Party abandoned plans Tuesday to hand-count tens of thousands of ballots on primary day in March, saying it could not line up enough workers to carry out the manual tally.
County GOP chief Allen West acknowledged the staffing shortfall after weeks of planning, reversing a push that would have made Dallas County the nation’s largest jurisdiction to attempt a manual ballot count.
The decision halts a plan driven by GOP skepticism of county voting machines, even as research shows hand counting takes longer, costs more and increases the risk of error.
“When you can’t get the personnel that means you are not going to be able to count in the right amount of time and that would put election judges in a bad situation,” West said.
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Former Texas Republican Party chairman Allen West gives remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday, July 11, 2021, in Dallas. (Elias Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News)
Elias Valverde II / Staff Photographer
He said the party raised more than $420,000 to fund the effort, which would not have applied to early voting. But as of Tuesday it had recruited only half of the 3,000 workers needed to conduct the labor-intensive hand count on primary day March 3.
Texas law requires vote totals to be submitted to the state 24 hours after polls close on an Election Day, setting up a herculean task with 49,000 ballots expected to be cast on that day alone based on past voter turnout.
The reversal comes as the Dallas County Elections Department was working to finalize contracts with the Republican and Democratic parties for managing their separate primaries. Elections Administrator Paul Adams told the Commissioners Court on Dec. 16 that he wanted the contracts in place by Dec. 20.
With that deadline passed, West said he intends to finalize the contract with the county on Wednesday.
“It was a great effort and I thank all the people that supported the effort, but if I can use a military term from World War II, sometimes you don’t want to go a bridge too far,” said West, a retired Army lieutenant colonel. “I don’t think we had the time to find the additional volunteers.”
How the GOP hand-count plan unraveledSeptember: Dallas County Republicans voted to pursue hand-counting ballots for the March 3 GOP primary, citing distrust of voting machines.The pitch: Party chairman Allen West cast the move as a transparency push, even as election experts warned hand counts are slower, costlier and more error-prone.The hurdle: The plan required a separate, precinct-based election and 3,000 trained workers to count Republican ballots on Election Day.The logistics: Party leaders said they raised enough money for the hand count but struggled to recruit enough workers.Now: The GOP has dropped the plan, ending what would have been the largest hand-count effort in the country.