DALLAS — Dallas County will recount ballots from Super Tuesday voters in the 2020 primary after discovering 44 thumb drives containing ballots were not included in the final results.
State District Judge Emily Tobolowsky approved the request Tuesday to manually recount the votes.
The error affected about 7,000 ballots in Dallas County, which had more than 317,000 voters on Super Tuesday. The majority of ballots were cast in the Democratic Party primary, and while it was unclear if the recount would affect any race outcomes, former Vice President Joe Biden carried the county at the top of the ticket by more than 93,000 votes over Bernie Sanders.
While reconciling the books, Dallas County Election Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole noticed she did not have enough ballots for everyone who showed up to vote.
She filed the court petition and affidavit for a recount late Friday, reported WFAA-TV.
The drives are a piece of voting equipment Dallas County used for the first time during the March 3 primary elections - representing almost a tenth of the total vote centers open on Super Tuesday.
“Of the 44 thumb drivers, 16 were not received in a timely manner to the Elections Department and 28 were from voting machines not scheduled to be used but were used by volunteer election officials,” Pippins-Poole said in a statement Saturday evening addressing the blunder.
The recount will take place on Wednesday at 8 a.m. and will only concern the paper ballots from the 44 machines that were missed.
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