Updated at 8:02 p.m. with Secretary of State’s announcement it is conducting an audit.
AUSTIN — Texas will audit the 2020 election results in four of the state’s largest counties, an announcement that arrived hours after former President Donald Trump pressed for such a review in a state the Republican carried last November.
The Secretary of State’s office announced late Thursday that “a full and comprehensive forensic audit” is underway in Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin counties. Democrat Joe Biden won in three of the counties, while Trump carried Collin County. It is not clear what the review will cost or who is carrying it out.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump requested that Gov. Greg Abbott add a 2020 election audit to the current special session agenda. Without offering any evidence, he wrote that “Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties.”
“Let’s get to the bottom of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam!” Trump wrote in an open letter to Abbott, who has yet to publicly respond.
The push shows how nine months after Biden took office, Trump is still sowing doubt about an election he says was rigged. In states where the Republican made said there was fraud, more than 80 judges, some of whom he appointed, tossed out the allegations as baseless. Trump’s own Justice Department said it had no evidence of widespread voter fraud. In Texas, a top election official called the 2020 election “smooth and secure.”
Trump has been touting a partisan “forensic audit” mounted by Senate Republicans in Arizona, where an inexperienced private contractor was brought in to review 2020 election results in Phoenix’s Maricopa County. The findings have yet to be released, but election officials and outside experts have criticized the review process as flawed and insecure.
It’s not clear what type of audit the Secretary of State’s office is pursuing. In a statement, the office said it “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.”
“We anticipate the Legislature will provide funds for this purpose,” the statement said.
The office is currently without a permanent leader. Abbott’s last nominee for the job, Ruth Ruggero Hughs, failed to get confirmation from the state Senate and left the office in May. Deputy Secretary of State Joe Esparza, a former Abbott staffer, is acting as interim.
Democrats swiftly condemned the announcement.
“Let me be the first to congratulate the disgraced former president, Donald Trump, on his apparently becoming the new governor of Texas,” Grand Prairie Rep. Chris Turner, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, said on Twitter. “Pitiful yet predictable that (Abbott) has capitulated to Trump yet again.”
Audit law already passed
Texas lawmakers already passed policies this year to require new election audits. One empowers the Secretary of State’s office to audit two years worth of a county’s election results after presidential and midterm contests. While the four counties up for review each time must be randomly chosen, two need to have at least 300,000 residents, meaning the state’s 18 largest counties will be checked far more regularly than the rest.
Trump dismissed that requirement as “watered-down” because it won’t cover the 2020 results.
“This short amendment doesn’t answer the questions Texans have about the last election. Texans demand a real audit to completely address their concerns,” he wrote.
Trump is lobbying for a GOP-authored bill that would allow party officials to request audits of their county’s 2020 election results and also set up a process for future reviews. In the final days of the last special session, Senate Republicans passed the bill over Democrats’ objections. The House did not take it up.
Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said his measure is meant to ensure that any questions about election irregularities are addressed. But Democrats warned the result could be a partisan audit like Arizona’s.
Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, filed similar legislation in the House for consideration in this special session. It has not yet been referred to a committee.
“Despite my big win in Texas, I hear Texans want an election audit!” Trump wrote. “You know your fellow Texans have big questions about the November 2020 Election.”
Trump won Texas
Trump carried Texas last November by a margin of 5.6 percentage points, the closest in a presidential contest in the last two decades. Down-ballot, Republicans beat back a national push by Democrats to flip the Texas House and pick up more seats in Congress.
The Texas Legislature began its third special session on Monday, with a primary focus on redrawing the state’s legislative and Congressional districts. Abbott added several other items to the agenda, including restricting the sports teams transgender students can play on and divvying up federal pandemic aid. The 30-day session cannot go longer than Oct. 20.
Abbott’s office did not respond to questions about Trump’s request. Trump has already endorsed Abbott in his bid for a third term, in which the Republican governor faces pressure from two GOP primary challengers. One of them, former state Sen. Don Huffines, has demanded that Abbott add an election audit to the special session agenda.
“I’m glad President Trump is pushing Greg Abbott to pass a forensic election audit here in Texas. Together, we can force him to do things he doesn’t want to do,” Huffines said in a statement Thursday.
