Texas GOP lawmaker wants to audit the 2020 election results — in counties Biden won

Texas state Rep. Steve Toth (R) on Monday announced that he had filed legislation calling for a “forensic audit” of the state’s 2020 election results.

Former President Donald Trump won Texas in 2020 by nearly 6 percentage points despite ultimately losing the national electoral college and popular vote to President Joe Biden.

Toth’s bill, the “Texas Voter Confidence Act,” would not audit all of the 11 million-plus votes that were cast in the state. Instead, the legislation calls for an audit in “every precinct in each county with a population of 415,000 or more.”

This would disproportionately target counties that voted for Biden.

According to a list of Texas counties by population, only three that voted for Trump — Collin, Denton, and Montgomery — would be audited under the bill if it became law. The remaining 10 counties voted for Biden, including Texas’ two most populous counties, Harris County (where Houston is located) and Dallas County.

“We need a forensic audit to uncover all the voter fraud,” Toth said in a statement accompanying his announcement.

He added, “Texans want to know more about the claims of voter fraud and deserve to have confidence in their elections.”

Toth did not offer any proof to back his claims of widespread fraud. However, he echoed other Republicans in Texas, including Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who have made baseless accusations of voter fraud in the 2020 election, allegations that have no basis in reality.

Toth’s bill may be on hold for the time being. Currently, the Texas Legislature is unable to form a quorum, and thus cannot consider legislation, after Democratic lawmakers left the state in protest of a GOP proposal empowering several voter suppression efforts.

The audit request follows a similar controversial “audit” of the 2020 vote in Arizona, undertaken by conservative activists. That process has been criticized for using unscientific protocols, promoting conspiracy theories, and allegedly damaging state-owned election equipment.

Republicans across the country have also considered replicating that process, including in places Trump won.

Utah state Rep. Steve Christiansen, for instance, visited the Arizona “audit” earlier in June, telling the Daily Beast he wanted to hold the same sort of process in his home state, where Trump won by more than 20 percentage points.

In North Carolina, Republican members of the state legislature are also pushing for an audit. Trump won the state by 1.3 points in 2020.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.