This link to the Texas Secretary of State has primary election returns for the Democratic and Republican Parties.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
This link to the Texas Secretary of State has primary election returns for the Democratic and Republican Parties.
How could Paul receive no delegates, with ~69,000 votes, but Santorum receive two delegates with ~49,000 votes?
8th USA Parliament Day to Day Update; Our Team is Too Slow, We’re Too Small and We’re Being Decimated!
http://usparliament.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=551&p=1065#p1065
#1 The SOS probably doesn’t know how to apportion the delegates. Texas law simply requires that 3/4 of national delegates, excluding party and elected officials, be “based on” the primary results. And even that rule was waived, because of the delayed primary. The Democrats did not use the presidential primary results.
The term “based on” can include winner-take-all, and allocation by district. Traditionally, the Democrats have used senate districts; while the Republicans use congressional districts. Republicans have often used thresholds that would require a candidate to get 20% of the vote to be allocated any delegates, unless no candidate received 20%, and would permit a candidate with a majority to receive all votes.
This year, the Republican National Party required any State holding a primary before April to use proportional allocation of delegates, or receive a 50% penalty. So Texas provided that national delegates be based on the proportion of the statewide vote. While many delegates will be chosen by congressional district, the apportionment is based on the statewide vote, with assignment based on the congressional district vote.
And because of the delayed primary, the national delegates will be chosen by the state convention (next week) will only be pledged to vote for a candidate for one or two rounds, unless released.
Primaries in Texas are conducted by the parties, on a county basis. Neither political party holds primaries in all counties, and they use different polling places, and may combined different election precincts.
But early voting is conducted by the county election officials, and about 50% of voters voted early. And ordinarily, the county parties will use the county voting equipment (and it is possible that federal law would essentially compel use of the county voting equipment).
The counties pay for conduct of the early voting, while the state pays for election day primary voting. So candidates file with the political parties, the parties then take the lists to the county election officials, who program the voting machines that they are renting. The party election judges, who are likely the same people who work polls for the general election, then conduct voting at the Republican or Democratic polling place – and poll books are marked with which primary a person voted in. The voting machines are then taken to the county tabulation center, where the votes are tabulated. And state law also requires that the SOS maintain unofficial election night tabulations for primaries.
The county and state parties will do the official canvass, and then the SOS will keep a copy of the results.
So it looks a lot like a state-conducted election because it conducted according to state law, and using regular election equipment, and often the regular polling places and election judges.
One place you can see that the elections are conducted by the parties, is that the candidate lists on the SOS web site are just links to the party web sites.