Election officials discovered 10,000 uncounted mail-in ballots over the weekend in a Texas county after the 2022 primary last week.
Two close Democratic primary races, one for a state House seat and another for Texas attorney general, hang in the balance. The ballots, 6,000 for Democrats and 4,000 for Republicans, were scanned into the tabulation computer, but they were not added to the unofficial final results, Harris County officials announced Sunday.
“It seems to me that somebody should’ve known that 10,000 ballots were missing,” Dutton said. “If 10,000 ballots were missing and nobody knew that, God help us." Joe Jaworski, former mayor of Galveston, Texas, leads civil rights attorney Lee Merritt by 1,418 votes in the race to become the Democratic nominee for attorney general. Although Jaworski claimed victory Friday, Merritt has not conceded, and it remains unclear who will receive the second spot in a runoff planned for May. Incumbent Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will also face a runoff election after failing to secure at least 50% of the vote in the Lone Star State’s Republican primary.
In addition, as a consequence of stricter new voting rules, thousands of mail-in ballots lacking proper identification were sent back, the Associated Press reported.