Now to the ongoing drama and confusion
over the midterm election in Harris County.
Republicans are making serious allegations
against the new election administrator,
including that he intentionally did not
provide enough ballot paper to polls and
what they call Republican strongholds.
We have team coverage for you tonight,
including the latest on the ballot count,
but let's get right to Matt Doherty with
reaction to those allegations. Matt.
Yeah, Ron, there is no debate.
Lots of people were turned away
from polling sites when they
ran out of paper for ballots.
The question now is how many?
We started receiving calls
for ballot paper at 7:30 AM.
7:30. So. For me, I have to assess
exactly what was going on at those polling
places that they felt they needed paper.
When the polls opened at 30 minutes
for several Harris County polling sites,
Tuesday's election can best be described
as a big mess. And we had people
calling us constantly from our polls
saying we are almost out of paper,
we are running out of paper,
we have run out of paper and they have
had to turn away people from voting.
When poll workers tried to get more paper
and he was told no,
they've got sufficient paper,
he got that one of the people
there to actually call the judge
and they proceeded to argue.
With the presiding judge saying no,
you've got enough paper
this afternoon, leaders with the
Harris County Republican Party claim
it has become clear to them that the
paper shortage at the polls was more
widespread than previously thought.
They alleged. Thousands may have
been disenfranchised enough votes
to potentially sway an election.
And, if you run the math,
if there were 350 people
turned away from the poll,
not allowed to vote.
And you have 782 locations.
It's not a leap of logic to
believe that we're going to be in
the 10s of thousands of people
who were wrongfully turned away.
GOP leaders take it a step further,
claiming the 23 polling sites
that ran out of paper were all
located in Republican strongholds.
KHOU 11 legal analyst Bob Stein
takes issue with that, though.
He says people don't often vote at the
polling site closest to where they live.
He says you can't reliably determine how
someone will vote based on the location
of a polling site in Harris. County
and the claim that there was
like thousands and thousands
and thousands of folks who got
disenfranchised on this is not true.
There's no claim to that.
There's no proof of that.
Harris County Democratic Party
Chair Otis EV Begara, who is also
part of the Elections Commission,
takes issue with the GOP's
disenfranchisement claims as well.
But the calls that we got were,
hey, we couldn't vote at this
location because paper ran out.
So we found a polling location next door
or in within a mile or two mile radius.
The Harris County Elections
Office sent us this brief.
Statement tonight in response
which reads quote once we
complete our canvassing process,
we will turn our attention to a
post election review and report.
Local Republican leaders say
that they are going to wait to
see that final vote count before
they decided what to do next.
Back to you. All right.
Thank you so much, Matt Doherty.
Now let's turn to Grace White with
the very latest on efforts to
finish counting the votes. Grace.
Reka and Ron, we've confirmed tonight all
the Election Day ballots have been counted.
That is, except for the military
ballots that are still coming in.
This is a significant update
because as you remember,
the county went to court to ask for
an extension to complete this count.
There were hearings today even when
scheduled for tonight at 8:00 PM,
but the county Attorney's Office confirms
all of that has been cancelled now that
the Election Day count is complete,
in addition to those military ballots.
The mail in ballots postmarked by
Election Day but received the day after,
are also still pending.
But the big headline tonight,
for the purposes of the court,
the Election Day ballots have been
counted and the unofficial report
turned in to the Secretary of State.
Reka, back to you.