Eastland County, Texas, Struggles with its Decision to Hand-Count Primary Ballots

Here is an interesting story about the problems that have cropped up in Eastland County, Texas, after the county and the Republican Party decided to count ballots by hand in the upcoming March 3 Texas Republican primary.


Comments

Eastland County, Texas, Struggles with its Decision to Hand-Count Primary Ballots — 12 Comments

  1. With a Chaum Secret Ballot Receipt hand counts would be unnecessary unless the receipts showed enough ballots were miscounted that could change the outcome. Before an election election officials should have vote counters standing by if needed.

  2. Interesting alternative captions for the photos.

    “A photograph of four whi…ts all sitting a table.” (sic)

    “From left, Tammy Jones and Hershel Jones call out races from a sample ballot and mark it on a laminated tally sheet. The couple learned how to hand-count ballots, along with two other Eastland County residents on Feb. 23, 2026, in Eastland County, Texas.”

    “A photograph of a white woman in a sweater standing next to a group of four white people sitting at a table working on a piece of paper.”

    “Robin Hayes, the Eastland County Republican Party chair leads a hand count training with county residents on Feb. 23, 2026. The party voted last fall to hand count all of the GOP’s primary ballots. Hayes said she’s recruited about 90 people to count ballots on Election Day.”

    “A photograph of a woman …r and some decorations.”

    “Temi Nichols, the Eastland County elections administrator, looks up the county’s voter turnout in her office at the Eastland County Courthouse on Feb. 23, 2026. Nichols has been stressed over the county GOP’s decision to hand-count ballots, which has led to logistical issues for the primary election.”

  3. The partisan primaries should be eliminated, and county offices moved to the May elections. State offices should be in November of odd years, and judicial offices in August.

  4. @Jim Riley,

    What you called “alternative captions” aren’t captions, but descriptions of the images for use by viewers who can’t see the photographs (e.g., blind or other visually impaired people using a screen reader). They presumably also will be able to read the captions corresponding to those descriptions.

  5. @Dave Kadlecek,

    The text had the “alt” attribute. I think my browser was having trouble rendering an image, and all of a sudden there was this weird text:

    “A photograph of a white woman in a sweater standing next to a group of four white people sitting at a table working on a piece of paper.”

    How are they generated?

  6. @Jim Riley,

    The “alt” text description for an image may be written by a person preparing the article in which it appears for publication, or it may be generated by AI as part of the publishing process. It is in the HTML for the web page (in this case on the newspaper’s website), so it is not created by the browser of the viewer (though the browser may have to do with whether the “alt” text is displayed). The situation you described, where a browser is unable to display the image, is another situation where that text is typically shown.

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