Texas election officials on Friday released preliminary findings of an election “forensic audit” ordered earlier this year by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott —at the request of Donald Trump— in three large counties won by President Joe Biden. To the surprise of no one, it only confirmed Trump’s defeat in those counties.
The audit was launched by the Texas Secretary of State in September for Dallas, Harris, Tarrant, and Collin counties.”
As noted by local NBC affiliate 5NBCDFW, “the Office of Dallas and Harris are two of the state’s largest Democratic counties while Tarrant and Collin are typically two of the largest Republican counties. However, in the 2020 election, Joe Biden narrowly won Tarrant County over Trump.
According to the station, “The office of John Scott, who was appointed Texas Secretary of State in October 2021, said Friday 3,885,875 votes were cast in the November 2020 election in Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, and Harris counties and that those nearly 4 million votes represent approximately 35% of the roughly 11.3 million votes cast statewide.
“The preliminary report found that out of those nearly 4 million votes in those four counties, there were 17 deceased voters and 60 cross-state duplicate votes. The report also confirmed that the counties were removing deceased voters from voter rolls as expected.”
“First part of Texas’ 2020 election audit reveals few issues, echoes findings from review processes already in place: An initial review of four counties’ election results — launched after pressure from former President Donald Trump and touted by GOP leaders — showed few discrepancies between electronic and hand counts of ballots in a sample of voting precincts.”
Texas is one of several Republican-led states that have pushed through new voting restrictions in the name of election security since the party lost the White House. The effort, which led to new restrictions in Georgia, Florida, Arizona and elsewhere, was spurred in part by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen from him.
Facing a slush of criticism, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has defended the state’s voting restriction, claiming made it makes it easier to vote and harder to cheat.
The Justice Department disagreed with the governor and filed a lawsuit against the state in November saying the laws violated both the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act. The DOJ lawsuit The DOJ has since filed another lawsuit against the state over redrawn district maps they said were drawn with “discriminatory intent.”
Read the preliminary findings of the audit below.
