What's happening?
Commissioners voted on Oct. 8 to allow for a manual recount of votes from a randomly selected number of precincts once voting and an initial count is complete. The Texas secretary of state does require manual hand-counts of a single race across several voting precincts; however, a number of citizens requested this be expanded to include a manual hand-count of at least three voting precincts for all races on the ballot.
"I do agree with the concept; I don't have any problem with it," said Montgomery County Elections Administrator Suzie Harvey. "Our staff is prepared to do it in conjunction with volunteers."
How we got here
On Sept. 27, Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough and Precinct 2 Commissioner Charlie Riley held a public workshop session regarding election integrity to allow citizens to openly discuss any concerns regarding the county's election systems ahead of the Nov. 5 general election. The meeting lasted just over three hours as numerous residents requested a number of additional measures to "protect election systems," such as random manual counts of votes, changing election systems and ensuring voting machines are not connected to the internet.
A meeting of the Montgomery County Elections Commission was then held Sept. 30 to discuss in executive session the performance of current Elections Administrator Suzie Harvey before reaffirming her work in the position.
In their words
"A partial manual recount ... came up in each of our meetings and continued on into our elections commission public comments on Sept. 30," Keough said. "I move passage that we direct Suzie to add additional precincts to the partial manual recount in accordance with the secretary of state."
"The first general election that we did a partial manual count with the all-paper ballots was in 2022, and that was our first one, so it took a little bit of time to get in a routine," Harvey said. "The most time-consuming part is sorting out the ballots from early voting that are applicable to the count."
The impact
The hand-count will take place once all voting has concluded and voting results are available to the public. Harvey said during the Oct. 8 meeting that the hand-count could take multiple weeks to perform and will not delay certification of the vote, which is required to be done within 21 days of the election, according to the Texas secretary of state.
