HARRIS COUNTY, Texas – Allegations in an elections audit by the Secretary of States office were echoed to KPRC 2 by Senator Paul Bettencourt ahead of the upcoming November election.
”There’s a massive problem with the chain of custody from the 2020 election that harris county has been unable to explain,” said the District 7 Senator. “I mean well over 140,000 voter records are still unaccounted for in the audit that’s underway.”
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Bettencourt says the audit reveals the numbers of voters and the numbers of votes cast in 2020 don’t match up, a problem he says was first discovered during the 2020 early voting.
”And at the end of the voting, I had a factual complaint of 1884 more votes than on the county voter roster,” he said.
He believes the issues correlate with 14 mobile ballot boxes.
”That’s going to be well over 100,000 votes that are up for scrutiny now,” Bettencourt said. He says former elections officials have not been able to provide the software needed to open the mobile ballot boxes up and investigate.
”I mean they’re violating state and federal law by not having all this information,” he said.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo fired back in a tweet that reads.
”I’m concerned about possible inappropriate state interference in our elections. Since 2020, we’ve seen sensational audits under the guise of voter protection. It’s all about feeding into the big lie. I hope this will just be a set of hands to help us run another secure election.”
We reached out to Hidalgo’s office for further comment but have not gotten a response.
Meanwhile, Bettencourt says he hopes the current findings send a strong message to the new elections administration for this upcoming election.