Biden is beating Trump in Tarrant County, as mail-in ballots are still being counted
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have pulled ahead of Donald Trump and Michael Pence in Tarrant County.
On Thursday afternoon, as Fort Worth-area election workers continued processing thousands of mail-in ballots left over from the election Tuesday, the Biden-Harris ticket pulled ahead of Trump-Pence.
The Democrats now have 403,698 votes, compared to 403,271 for Trump and his Republican running mate, according to a Tarrant County elections office report released just after 2:30 p.m. Thursday.
The result won’t change the election — Trump and Pence have already been declared winners in Texas. But the support for the top of the Democratic ticket shows that, while Fort Worth-area voters largely rejected efforts to create a “blue wave” of victories across North Texas, they did at least seem enamored with Biden and Kamala Harris.
Or, maybe Tarrant County voters just disliked the Trump-Pence ticket.
The gap between the Republican and Democratic candidates for president and vice president could continue to grow as Tarrant County elections officials finish up their work verifying — and, in some cases, manually duplicating — ballots that arrived by mail but for a variety of reasons haven’t yet been processed.
“Biden can still win Tarrant County! We are within 200 VOTES this morning! Count every vote,” the Tarrant County Democratic Party wrote Thursday on its Twitter feed.
Heider Garcia, Tarrant County election administrator, wrote on Twitter Thursday 15,000 ballots are still waiting to be processed, and that his office hoped to have the work done by the end of Friday. He also said that 13,636 ballots had been verified and duplicated by county ballot board members.
On Wednesday, Garcia obtained an order from 141st District Judge John Chupp to continue processing mail-in ballots. State law would have provided for a time limitation for counting the votes, but Chupp ruled that mail-in ballots do not qualify as “precinct election records” under the law, and therefore the counting should continue.
The court directed Garcia to provide an update on his agency’s ballot-counting efforts by Monday.
Fort Worth resident Jimmy Sweeney said on his Twitter account, regarding how well Biden and Harris did in the Fort Worth area: “Insignificant for the national election, but a huge step for Texas!”
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 1:02 PM.
