GOP lawsuit demanding hand count of Texas ballots should be dismissed, county argues

By Jen Rice

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Primary voters line up to cast ballots at a voting center in Dallas, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

A last-minute lawsuit demanding a hand count of every paper ballot in Texas goes far beyond anything state election law requires, Potter County said in support of a motion to dismiss the case.

Potter County officials are asking a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by GOP attorneys on the eve of the election that argued Texas’ existing post-election audit requirements are insufficient to detect potential hacking, artificial intelligence tampering or errors in electronic voting systems. 

“This eleventh-hour lawsuit targets a county official, whom Plaintiffs admit is following state law, in order to ask the Court for a sweeping statewide intervention into the process of certifying election results based on no more than theoretical possibility,” the county stated in its motion.

The case was filed in Potter County, a small Texas county where the only federal judge is U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee with a record of issuing rulings friendly to far-right plaintiffs. 

The lawsuit seeks to prevent certification of Texas’ federal elections until officials manually hand-count all ballots statewide. Now, Potter County is asking the court to dismiss it. 

The case was filed as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) trailed state Rep. James Talarico (D) in a bid for a U.S. Senate seat.

On Election Day, voters rejected Paxton — and every other GOP official in statewide office — by such decisive margins that Republican candidates swiftly conceded their races, rather than contest them. 

Now, with Democratic candidates, including Talarico, preparing to take their new seats, Potter County is asking a federal court to throw out the case.

“Election security and integrity are important issues, and they deserve to be thoughtfully analyzed and debated,” Potter County said. “Our constitutional system provides an avenue to do so: the legislative process. The difficulty, time, and expense of engaging in that process, however, do not make this lawsuit a proper forum for that debate.”