DALLAS — As the saying goes, the third time’s a charm.
“This is about addressing all of the concerns,” said Tan Parker, Texas State Senator (R) at the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs, on Wednesday.
Christian Adkins, Texas Secretary of State’s Director of Elections, addressed lawmakers at that hearing to discuss concerns regarding ballots. “We reached out to Dallas County to try to get more information about what happened. They acknowledged that they had a problem on their first day of accuracy testing,” said Adkins.
A memo obtained by WFAA from the state’s Election Division Examination Team said on Sept. 18, Dallas County made minor formatting changes to the ballot that resulted in specific races not matching up with its selection. The county separated those incorrect ballots and retested them the following day showing no errors.
On Oct. 8, they did another test lasting 13 hours. That test had no errors and was approved by both the Texas Attorney General’s Office and the Texas Secretary of State, but lawmakers such as Parker still have doubts.
“Why was that allowed to happen in the first place,” asked Parker. Some Republican lawmakers called for another ballot test for Thursday.
“All that we’re doing here is focused on restoring confidence, having an accurate test, so that we can have an accurate election,” said Parker.
“It’s a bad way to spend my time, other senators’ time,” said Democratic State Senator Nathan Johnson. He called the doubts an attack going beyond local elections.
“We have to respond to every far-right dog whistle that gets exhaled instead of really doing the work. You know what the elections administrators should be doing right now, administering elections,” said Johnson. “It bothers me that people seem to be sowing the seeds of disbelief of our, in our elections”
Dallas County Democratic Party Chairman, Kardal Coleman, said the doubt leads to confusion. “Look, now is not the time to create a witch hunt,” said Coleman. “This is the most important election of our lifetime, and we need to make sure that this is a, a safe and fair election”
After almost five hours of testing, Thursday’s test showed zero errors.
We reached out to several Republican lawmakers and the Dallas County GOP. No one was available for comment.