Texas county finds 10K uncounted ballots from primary day

HOUSTON (AP) — About 10,000 mail ballots were tabulated but not counted in Texas’ most populous county on the day of last week’s election, officials said, adding to the delay in determining some winners in the nation’s first primary of the 2022 midterms.

Election officials in Harris County, home to Houston, said late Saturday that an “oversight” led to 10,000 ballots not being counted. Those votes — 6,000 Democratic and 4,000 Republican — will be added to the final tallies Tuesday.

“While the votes were scanned into our tabulation computer, they were not transferred and counted as a part of the unofficial final results as they should have been,” the Harris County Elections Office said in a statement.

The AP will tabulate the additional votes from Harris County and update its vote count.

The March 1 primary was the first statewide election that took place in Texas under new, tighter voting laws. Thousands of mail ballots were rejected statewide for not having the new, required identification.