The Dallas County Republican Party will proceed with hand-counting thousands of hand-marked paper ballots on the March 3 primary’s Election Day, positioning the county to become the largest in the United States with a manually counted election.
The party’s executive committee voted in September to explore the concept, but GOP chair Allen West confirmed on Friday he will sign a contract with the Dallas County Elections Department to hold a separate primary from Democrats to enact a Republican hand count.
Research shows the cost, time demands and risk of human error make hand counting far less reliable than machine tabulation, and fewer than 1% of Americans live in jurisdictions with the manual process. But the practice has been evoked in recent years amid misinformation around the accuracy of voting equipment, and President Donald Trump has pledged to eliminate voting machines and mail ballots.
On Tuesday, before the Republicans decided how to proceed, Trump inaccurately posted on Truth Social that “Dallas County, Texas, just went to all PAPER BALLOTS.”
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“This effort goes far beyond just hand-counting ballots,” West said in a statement Friday. “Not only are the eyes of Texas upon us, but the eyes of America. I am well aware that there are many, to include Republicans, who wish this endeavor to fail. However, if anyone seeks to intentionally and purposefully sabotage this effort, you will answer to me.”
Former Texas Republican Party chairman Allen West gives a thumbs up to the crowd before speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday, July 11, 2021, in Dallas. (Elias Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News)
Elias Valverde II / Staff Photographer
The use of hand-marked ballots and hand counting will only apply to Republicans’ Election Day, not the early voting period – but that day alone could exceed 49,000 ballots based on past turnout.
Texas law requires vote totals to be submitted to the state 24 hours after polls close on Election Day, meaning the Republicans must count tens of thousands of ballots within a day.
West said he expected the Dallas County Republicans will need as many as 3,300 workers to staff precincts and count ballots. On Friday, he said the party raised $420,199 to fund the effort and secured 1,000 workers to meet his end-of-year goal.
The Democratic Party will use the county’s machine-marked paper ballots that are counted by tabulators as usual, but the Republicans’ move will have other impacts on all voters. Hand counting triggers a requirement for precinct-based voting, meaning members of both parties will not be able to use any vote center in the county on Election Day as they have since 2019.
Democratic party members have worried about the impact on voters accustomed to the accessibility of the county-wide voting system, which allows people to cast a ballot at any center in the county no matter their address.
“This is causing mass confusion,” said Elizabeth Hameline, a Democratic precinct chair and election judge. “If on Election Day somebody is in downtown Dallas for work and they cannot make it to Coppell, where they live, by 7 o’clock, then they will lose their ability to vote, and that affects Republicans as well as Democrats.”
West, in his statement, said precinct voting will “reduce the opportunities of fraud.”
But election experts say there are additional concerns about the accuracy of a hand count for such a large jurisdiction.
The Gillespie County Republican Party hand-counted more than 8,000 ballots cast in the March 2024 presidential primary, which resulted in multiple tallying errors, elections administrator Jim Riley previously told The Dallas Morning News. Twelve of 13 precincts had race tallies that did not match the number of ballots cast, although Riley said he does not believe it affected the outcome of any race.
The two parties must now finalize individual contracts with the Dallas County Elections Department and will use separate equipment and workers, unlike previous joint primaries. Democratic Chair Kardal Coleman said his party will also have to recruit more workers to accommodate the additional polling locations needed for Election Day precincts.
“This will take a mass organizing effort from the faith-based community, from those part of our Democratic base and those who want to stand up for what’s right and say no to voter suppression,” Coleman said.
Earlier this week, Deputy Elections Administrator Malissa Kouba said the county was still finalizing details of the Republicans’ proposed contract, like whether the county or Republicans would print the ballots and the voter check-in books, and who would supply the voting booths needed for hand-marked ballots.
In his statement, West alluded to concerns the party has raised about Dallas County’s voting machines that have “eroded confidence in these systems and processes.” Last year, the GOP alleged irregularities in the tests Dallas County conducted to verify the accuracy of machines before the 2024 general election.
The Texas Secretary of State responded with an on-site inspection before voting began that confirmed the county’s machines “counted ballots correctly” and complied with state standards.