During a Tuesday press conference, Allen West, the newly minted chairman of the Dallas County GOP and a former chair of the state Republican Party, called for an audit of the county’s election procedures.
Before his public appearance, West released an open letter outlining the processes he’s pushing for and calling for a neutral third party to review processes in Dallas County.
During his press conference, West claimed that “voting system equipment, processes, operating procedures, and protocols” in Dallas County have been a cause for concern for some time.
West is not calling for the audit “to question election results.” Instead, he is advocating for a “procedural audit to ensure Dallas is strictly adhering to all Texas Election Code sections and rules outlined by the Texas Administrative Code.”
Following the most recent primary election, House District 108 challenger Barry Wernick sought a recount in Dallas County, which expanded the margin between himself and state Rep. Morgan Meyer (R-Dallas) by 15 votes.
According to the most recent release of the University of Texas’s public polling project, Republicans in the Lone Star State are skeptical of election results headed into the general election. When asked whether they’d trust the presidential election result, 66 percent of Republicans said either no or they didn’t know, compared to 33 percent who said they would trust the result no matter the outcome.
At least one of West’s recommendations appears to target claims that ballots are being printed with information that can link them back to voters. During a hearing last week, a representative from the Secretary of State’s office said attempts to replicate these claims during testing were unsuccessful. Representatives from election equipment vendors also rebuffed these claims during testimony.
West’s actions come the same week that a coalition of grassroots activists called on Gov. Greg Abbott to convene a special session on election integrity.
The Secretary of State’s office is conducting a series of county audits of the 2022 election cycle, but Dallas is not included in the limited number of counties receiving a review.
A state audit of Dallas County’s 2020 election, completed in 2022, found multiple procedural failures.
After the 2020 election, longtime Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole retired. Since then, the county’s elections have been run by two different administrators.
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