A GOP primary in Texas has sparked concerns over attempts to move away from electronic ballots.

Republican efforts to hand count ballots in a seemingly low-profile Texas county primary election has led to a number of errors.

Gillespie County Republicans, led by Chairman Bruce Campbell, decided months ago to hand-count more than 8,000 ballots for the county GOP primary on March 5. Campbell then declared the results completely accurate and certified before, less than an hour after that certification, reversing course and saying discrepancies were found.

“It’s my mistake for not catching that,” Cambell said on Thursday while sitting inside the county election administration office. “I can’t believe I did that.”

The kerfuffle over ballot counting comes after a November rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump was solidified in primaries last week.

  • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
    51·
    8 months ago

    It only “costs little” because you have a ton of people willing to do it. What if there’s something that prevents people from volunteering? Say, snow? Or maybe a worldwide pandemic? Or massive wildfires?

    These are all obvious possibilities. There’s really no reason to not machine count with a matching hand count. Extra cost? This is your entire country’s election. It’s not the time to pinch pennies.

    • CountVon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      53·
      8 months ago

      It only “costs little” because you have a ton of people willing to do it.

      First off you say that like it’s a bad thing. For the record, it is not. Second, many of the people counting votes are paid, i.e. Elections Canada employees. Scrutineers could be volunteers or paid employees of the party/candidate they represent.

      What if there’s something that prevents people from volunteering?

      That would equally inhibit people from voting. Besides which, elections can and have been postponed in cases of severe weather, and wildfires have been considered in cases where they’ve been occurring around an election. No politician or Elections Canada supervisor is going to send voters, employees and volunteers out to die for an election.

      Or maybe a worldwide pandemic?

      We had one, it went fine. Anyone who didn’t like the thought of voting in public had the option of voting by mail, something that every Canadian has been allowed to do since 1993.

      There’s really no reason to not machine count with a matching hand count.

      Yes there fucking is. Machines add completely unnecessary complexity to a simple system that works.

        • CountVon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          8 months ago

          Hey, don’t get me wrong, it’s not all sunshine and roses up here in the north. We have huge problems with cost of living, especially housing, which our current government is failing to address. We have a multi-party system but in my lifetime the national power only ever oscillated between two parties, Liberal (roughly equivalent to US Democrats) and Conservative (roughly equivalent to US Republicans pre-MAGA, or maybe even pre-Reagan). Based on current polling, Canadian discontent looks set to sweep out the incumbent Liberals and sweep in the opposition Conservatives sometime between now and Oct. 2025. I don’t think the Conservatives are going to do any better at addressing cost of living, but fear that they’ll bring in a bunch of regressive crap while they continue to fail in the same way the Liberals have failed. There are lots of other areas where Canada has room for improvement, but within the very narrow scope of how Canada runs its elections, that I will claim we got right.