Guadalupe, Cameron tapped for vote audit
AUSTIN — The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has selected the state’s most populated county and three others for an audit of election returns that will include the 2022 midterms.
Cameron, Guadalupe, Eastland and Harris counties were picked at random under a provision of the 2021 omnibus election law that created the audit process. Cameron and Harris were chosen from a pool of Texas’ 18 counties with populations of 300,000 or more and Guadalupe and Eastland from counties with fewer than 300,000 people.
Since the beginning of the year, the Secretary of State’s Office has been building a forensic audit department within its ranks. In November, Gov. Greg Abbott and top Republicans at the Legislature signed off on sending $4 million to the secretary of state’s office to staff up the division.
The audits will begin immediately after November’s midterms and also will examine other nonprimary elections, such as May 7’s on amendments to the Texas Constitution.
The audit process came about after the Legislature passed a sweeping election law, Senate Bill 1, in 2021 in reaction to fears over election security stoked by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud.
Republicans led the charge in passing the bill over the objections of House Democrats, who took desperate measures to block its passage by stealthily walking out on 2021’s regular session and then much more visibly fleeing the state during a special session.
Their efforts failed as several House Democrats quietly returned to Austin and allowed the House to gavel in with a quorum present.
The announcement of the counties comes as the Secretary of State’s Office continues to audit 2020 election returns for Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant counties. The office completed a preliminary report at the tail end of 2021, turning up little evidence of fraud.
The process has been criticized as a “fishing expedition” that has required the four counties to provide a full accounting of mail-in and provisional votes and chain of custody issues with ballots, as well as complaints received regarding the 2020 presidential election.
Secretary of state spokesman Sam Taylor said those audits should be completed by midseptember and published sometime before next year’s legislative session. Collin and Tarrant counties have provided all the requested documents, but Dallas and Harris have not, Taylor said.