Tarrant County’s elections administrator maintains the hand-counted audit of the Texas Senate District 9 runoff election stayed within his office’s budget, although he doesn’t yet know how much it cost.
Clint Ludwig, who requested the audit, did not provide cost information during his March 10 briefing to county commissioners about the hand-count’s “process and procedures.”
“It's difficult post-elections, as we start getting the invoices, and with as many elections back to back. They're behind,” Ludwig told commissioners. “So I can't tell you exactly when that's going to happen.”
Although he could not provide a timeline for when the Tarrant County Elections Office would have the final cost, he promised to share that information with commissioners as soon as possible.
Commissioner Alisa Simmons questioned who authorized the cost of auditing the election, as the issue never came before the commissioners court for a vote. Simmons is seeking the commissioners court’s countywide judge seat in the November election.
County departments have annual budgets but typically must request approval from commissioners to pay for specific projects that weren’t preapproved during the budget’s adoption.
Ludwig said his office over-budgets the cost of conducting the state-mandated partial audit of each election, noting the Senate District 9 audit “just increased the scope of an audit that we have to do.” He added that he isn’t aware of a requirement to request budget approval from the commissioners court for such an audit.
“When I buy asphalt, I’m still within my budget, but I have to come to court to get it approved,” Simmons said. “Everybody has to get everything — whatever they want — approved by the court even if we budgeted for it, so quit playing.”
Last month, Ludwig requested that all ballots cast during the nationally watched Jan. 31 runoff be hand-counted to verify the election’s integrity, according to a letter he wrote to the Texas Secretary of State obtained by the Report.
State law mandates that county elections offices audit a small fraction of ballots cast in each election but, with permission from the state, county officials can expand such audits to include all ballots.
Simmons said last month that she didn’t know about the audit until a resident brought it up during a meeting. At the time, she questioned the cost and necessity of the effort, warning that it could set an “expensive” precedent.
About 50 bipartisan volunteers hand-counted roughly 95,000 ballots over the course of 11 days in February. Both candidates in the runoff were allowed to select participants, Ludwig said, adding that the process is guided by state election law.
Ludwig noted the audit was led by members of the county’s ballot board, while county staff assisted with the effort with paperwork and ballot-sorting. Only ballot board members, not staff, did the counting.
Workers identified no errors during the audit except those caused during their manual counting, participants said last month.
Ludwig said he doesn’t foresee requesting a full audit of ballots cast in the November election. The audit proved Tarrant County’s elections are safe and secure, he said.
Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org.
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