{"id":107750,"date":"2026-01-01T19:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T19:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/107750\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T19:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T19:56:07","slug":"dallas-county-gop-scraps-plan-to-hand-count-primary-ballots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/107750\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas County GOP scraps plan to hand count primary ballots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/gettyimages-1770831042.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-v-7d0efd03=\"\"\/> article <\/p>\n<p data-v-7d0efd03=\"\">SCRANTON, PENNSYLVANIA, UNITED STATES &#8211; 2023\/11\/07: A woman takes a mail-in ballot from an envelope at a polling station in Pennsylvania. Municipal Elections in Pennsylvania had a low turnout. In the most recent statistic, about 15% to 27% of eligibl <\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">DALLAS &#8211; The Dallas County Republican Party has scrapped its plan to hand-count ballots for the upcoming March primary, citing a significant shortage of volunteers.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">While the party will return to using electronic tabulating equipment, Republican leadership still intends to move forward with a shift away from countywide voting on Election Day.<\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"KDFW\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">What&#8217;s New:<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">Dallas County GOP Chairman Allen West announced that the party fell short of the more than 3,000 volunteers required to accurately hand-count votes on primary election day. The decision was finalized on Dec. 29, just before the contract deadline with the county.<\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"KDFW\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">What they&#8217;re saying:<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">&#8220;If you can mitigate those risks, then you can move forward. If there&#8217;s no path to mitigation, then you can&#8217;t continue on,&#8221; West said. &#8220;We cannot take that risk of not being able to have the appropriate amount of counters because it would put our election judges in an untenable legal position.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> Changes for Election Day in Dallas <\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"KDFW\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">What we know:<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">Despite the reversal on hand-counting, the GOP still plans to conduct a &#8220;precinct-based&#8221; election. This means Republican voters will likely only be able to cast their ballots at their specifically assigned neighborhood precincts on Election Day, rather than at any countywide polling location.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">The Dallas County Democratic Party plans to continue utilizing countywide voting, allowing their voters to use any polling site in the county. Under Texas law, if one party chooses precinct-based voting, it can often complicate the &#8220;joint primary&#8221; setup, and officials are still clarifying how this will impact logistics at shared polling sites.<\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"KDFW\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">What&#8217;s next:<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">West stated that the party will use the lessons learned from this cycle to prepare for a potential hand-count during the 2028 presidential primary.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6c8e215c=\"\">Early voting for the March primary is scheduled to begin on Feb. 17.<\/p>\n<p class=\"group-source-paragraph\" data-v-4fbf7207=\"\">The Source: Information in this article comes from the Dallas County GOP.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox4news.com\/tag\/politics\/election\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Election<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox4news.com\/tag\/us\/tx\/dallas-county\/dallas\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6c8e215c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dallas<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"article SCRANTON, PENNSYLVANIA, UNITED STATES &#8211; 2023\/11\/07: A woman takes a mail-in ballot from an envelope at a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[102,581,409,223,160,162,161,287,216,393],"class_list":{"0":"post-107750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-plano","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-county","10":"tag-election","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-plano","13":"tag-plano-headlines","14":"tag-plano-news","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-tx","17":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}