Potter County Republicans Sue to Hand Count Every Texas Ballot Before Certification

The Potter County Republican Party has asked a federal judge in Amarillo to stop Texas election officials from certifying the state’s November 3 federal races until every paper ballot in every precinct has been counted by hand.

The suit, No. 2:26-cv-00215-Z, was filed October 27 in the Northern District of Texas and is before U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The plaintiffs are the county party and its chairman. The only named defendant is Potter County Elections Administrator Christy Benge, and the complaint proposes her as the representative of a class of Texas county election officials. The complaint and the motion to join the case do not show a hearing date.

What the suit asks

The complaint asks the court to declare a constitutional right to “pre-certification verification, based on a hand count of paper records or ballots, of electronically tabulated votes in federal elections.” It asks the court to bar officials from completing certification until that count is finished in all precincts, and to confirm the federal results on the hand count “if different from the election results reported by the election machines.”

The plaintiffs bring their claims under the due process and equal protection guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment. They say they do not seek to prevent voting, postpone Election Day, invalidate lawfully cast ballots or replace voting equipment before the election, and that they do not challenge any provision of the Texas Election Code.

The complaint argues that machines reading barcodes or QR codes count a vote the voter cannot personally read, and it calls a comparison with the paper record an essential safeguard. “The paper record or ballot provides an independent verification mechanism only if election officials actually compare a complete hand-count of all of the paper records or ballots,” it says. The Texas Tribune reports that the suit does not allege past Potter County or statewide results were altered.

What Texas law requires now

The Election Code already orders a hand count audit when an electronic voting system is used. County election custodians must manually count all races in at least 1 percent of election day polling locations and 1 percent of early voting locations, or three of each, whichever is greater. The locations are chosen at random, and a similar rule covers ballots by mail.

County canvasses must happen by November 17, and the state canvass falls between November 21 and December 7, according to a filing in the case and the Tribune.

Who is opposing it

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee moved on October 29 to join the case as defendants. Their brief says the relief “would rewrite state law, inject chaos on the eve of the election, and threaten the timely certification of election results.”

Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, told the Tribune that county officials “will follow those laws to the letter.”

Texas law sets the audit at a sample of locations. The suit asks a federal court to extend it to every ballot in 254 counties.