Red State Holding New Election?

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is considering having a new election in the state’s Harris County after news came out that the shortage of ballot paper had been more widespread than originally estimated to have been. Abbott noted that the widespread shortage could have led to a change in the election outcome, which might mean that a new election should be held.

In a tweet, the governor noted that there will be new laws implemented to ensure that Harris County is never able to conduct an election in this way again and to ensure that this won’t happen again.

A local news outlet KHOU 11, found that there had been 121 voting centers in the county where the ballot paper was not sufficient to allow for all the voters to cast their ballot. This is more than double the number of centers that Harris County had originally estimated to have run out of paper. In fact, the county had said that the centers that had experienced a shortage were between 46 and 68.

The Texas secretary of state told Newsmax that they had first been informed about the shortage in ballot papers shortly after the 2022 election day. They added that the information had been referred to the Texas attorney general’s office and the Harris County district attorney’s office for investigation.

Harris County is already subjected to additional post-election audits, which the secretary of state’s office said would be important for them to better understand what happened in the county as well as fully understand the root cause and the effects of the ballot shortage.