Texas Secretary of State’s office will audit Tarrant County’s 2020 election results
The Texas Secretary of State’s office announced late Thursday that it has launched a forensic audit of the 2020 general election results in Tarrant and three of Texas’ other largest counties.
“Under existing Texas laws, the Secretary of State has the authority to conduct a full and comprehensive forensic audit of any election and has already begun the process in Texas’ two largest Democrat counties and two largest Republican counties—Dallas, Harris, Tarrant, and Collin—for the 2020 election,” the news release reads. “We anticipate the Legislature will provide funds for this purpose.”
Additional details of the audit, including how it will be conducted, were not provided in the office’s announcement. The Star-Telegram has reached out to the office for more information.
The Texas Secretary of State seat is currently vacant. Former Secretary of State Ruth Hughs resigned in May. The office previously described Texas’ 2020 election as “smooth and secure.” Additionally, the U.S. Justice Department has said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the election.
The announcement comes hours after former President Donald Trump asked Gov. Greg Abbott to add an audit of the 2020 general election to the third special session that started Monday. Abbott’s office did not immediately return a request for comment on the audit or Trump’s request. There isn’t an item related to a review of 2020 election results on the agenda for the current special session, though a related bill has been filed.
“Let me be the first to congratulate the disgraced former president, Donald Trump, on his apparently becoming the new governor of Texas,” Rep. Chris Turner, a Grand Prairie Democrat who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, said in a tweet. “Pitiful yet predictable that (Gov. Abbott) has capitulated to Trump yet again.”
Tarrant County Election Administrator Heider Garcia did not immediately return an email seeing comment.
Trump lost the election to President Joe Biden, receiving about about 47% of the votes to Biden’s 51%. He has continued to push claims of election fraud since the November general election.
While he lost nationwide, Trump won in Texas with 52% of the votes. In Tarrant County, Biden narrowly won with 49.3% of votes to Trump’s 49.1%. Trump received 51% of votes in Collin County, 43% in Harris and 33% in Dallas. Fifty-one percent of voters in Tarrant County supported Republican John Cornyn in the election.
In Tarrant County during the 2020 general election, thousands of mail in-ballots were rejected because the bar codes were not legible, though the ballots were recopied so the votes could be counted. As the counting continued, Biden was leading in the historically red county.
Republican-backed audits of the 2020 election have been pursued in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
This story was originally published September 23, 2021 at 8:53 PM.
