Gillespie County Republicans Scale Back Hand Count Amid Staffing Shortage

Gillespie County Republicans have scrapped plans to hand count all of their 2026 primary ballots after failing to recruit enough workers — at least for early voting. The lack of manpower prompted party officials to vote last week to use the county’s voting equipment to tabulate thousands of ballots expected to be cast during the two weeks before Election Day on March 3.

However, Gillespie Republicans still plan to hand count ballots cast on Election Day, party officials told Votebeat.

The effort has deepened a divide within the county party: Some members wish to ditch electronic voting equipment entirely and hand count all ballots, while others trust that the county’s electronic voting equipment is safe and the process contains appropriate checks and balances. It’s a continuation of a long-running disagreement that began in 2024, when the county party first hand counted primary ballots.

In 2024, Republicans in Gillespie County spent nearly 24 hours on Election Day hand counting more than 8,000 ballots, deploying over 350 workers they’d spent months training and recruiting. Party officials later found tallying errors in 12 of the county’s 13 precincts, but because Texas law does not require a post-election audit of hand-counted ballots, those results were never formally reviewed for accuracy. The hand counting effort cost more than $40,000 — more than five times the roughly $7,000 spent in 2020, when the party used voting machines. Those expenses are ultimately reimbursed by the state.

Bruce Campbell, the chair of the county Republican Party, told Votebeat that since last week’s vote to use the county’s voting equipment to tabulate early votes, county party officials in charge of recruiting workers to count ballots have kept him in the dark about the number of people who have signed up to work on Election Day. Campbell said he doesn’t know how many will show up.

“They think that I’m going to somehow talk [workers] out of hand counting, which would not benefit me at all,” Campbell, who defended the 2024 hand count, said. “I just want the votes counted, and when it didn’t look like we were going to have enough people, I called a meeting and solved the problem.”

Worker shortages expose rift over machines, hand counting

The last time Campbell was given updated figures was at a party executive committee meeting in January, when the precinct chairs informed him that only about 60 people had signed up for a job that requires closer to 200.

Jim Riley, the county’s election administrator, declined a request for comment. He sent an email to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office late last month to say the local Republican party was receiving “little or no response in recruiting and training hand counters” and that some Republican precinct chairs had begun to “object” to the process of hand counting.

“I know this is a local problem and a Party problem. Yet, the splash back will hurt our elections in Gillespie,” he wrote, asking for guidance on how best to ensure votes were counted.

The Secretary of State’s Office told Votebeat they responded to Riley’s request for guidance via phone call, and declined further comment.

In 2024, the office sent election inspectors to monitor Gillespie County’s hand count, but no post-election audit was conducted because state law does not require audits of ballots counted by hand. This year, one inspector will observe part of early voting and two will be there on Election Day, according to the agency.

Texas law does require a bipartisan post-election audit of machine-counted ballots in a random sampling of precincts. But Gillespie Republicans say they plan to go further, voluntarily hand recounting all ballots cast in the election whether they were initially counted by hand or by machine — a step that would require recruiting many of the same volunteers a second time.

Party officials have not released details about how that recount would work. But unlike in 2024, this year’s ballots were designed to be scanned by a tabulator if needed, allowing results to be verified without organizing another full hand count. It’s unclear if party officials will take that step.

In 2024, the old ballot design meant results could only be counted — and recounted — by hand. Without a scannable paper trail, there was no practical way to independently verify the outcome without organizing another full hand count, so the 2024 results were never formally audited or otherwise checked for accuracy. This year, the ballots can be run through voting machines, a decision Riley told the Secretary of State’s Office he made because he “anticipated the collapse potential” of the hand count.

In the same email to the state, Riley described a chaotic internal debate within the county GOP. During a Zoom call held the day he sent the email, he wrote, party leaders acknowledged the mounting problems but disagreed about how to move forward — and some did not show up at all. “I didn’t expect the childish behavior of these folks,” he writes.

That meeting described in Riley’s email was the precursor for last week’s vote to count the early voting ballots electronically instead. The vote passed 7-3, Campbell said.

In September, Campbell sent the party’s 13 precinct chairs — local elected party officials tasked with staffing polling locations — contact information for all 355 workers who’d counted ballots in 2024. Campbell said the recruitment effort by precinct chairs wasn’t done early enough and there was little interest among hand counters for returning this year.

“People weren’t signing up like they did last time for whatever reason, so if we don’t have enough people, we need to be responsible,” said Campbell.

Lack of responsibility in this context has consequences. Texas law requires that ballots be counted within 24 hours after polls close. If a county’s results are not reported to the state within that window, party officials from that county could face a misdemeanor charge. They could also be subject to lawsuits from candidates contesting the results.

But not everyone in the party shares Campbell’s worries. David Treibs, a Republican precinct chair and vocal opponent of electronic tabulation, opposed the move to count the ballots electronically. He said he hasn’t heard of any candidates on the ballot concerned about the hand count, and told Votebeat he’s not worried about legal fallout if the count isn’t done by the state-mandated deadline.

“Nobody’s gone to jail yet over this,” Treibs said. “I don’t think anybody’s going to sue either, unless they want to make an example out of this.”

He also rejected assertions that the party’s recruitment efforts were unsuccessful.

“We were on track” to have enough workers, he told Votebeat. “I believe strongly that that was not the real issue. They just wanted to flip us back to machines.”

Each of the county’s 13 precincts will need a minimum of three election workers to help supervise the polling location and help check in voters, and a minimum of three additional people to hand count the ballots. The county’s two largest precincts would require between 3-5 teams of people to hand count.

Triebs said he doesn’t know how many workers the party has recruited. His precinct — precinct 13 — is fully staffed. But Triebs said it won’t matter if they don’t get the numbers they’re expecting — they’ll just take longer to count the ballots.

“It’s not like they’re going to shred all the ballots if we’re not done on time. Of course not. That’s ridiculous. That’s not going to happen, “ Treibs said. “The ballots will be counted, so that’s not the issue.”

Gillespie County Republicans Scale Back Hand Count Amid Staffing Shortage was originally published by Votebeat Texas and is republished with permission.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.