A Republican member of the Texas House introduced a bill Monday seeking a forensic audit of the election in the state’s largest counties.
The Texas Voter Confidence Act, filed by GOP Rep. Steve Toth, would authorize the governor, the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the House — all of whom are Republicans — to select an independent third party to conduct the election audit. The review would focus on the votes cast in Texas’ 13 counties with populations over 415,000.
Former President Donald Trump carried Texas in the 2020 election; however, President Joe Biden won in areas including Houston, Austin and San Antonio — the biggest metropolitan areas.
“We need a forensic audit to uncover all the voter fraud,” Toth said Monday in a post on Woodlandsonline, a community website. “Texans want to know more about the claims of voter fraud and deserve to have confidence in their elections. … Voters want to know that their legal vote counts and matters.”
The state House Democratic delegation has fled en masse to Washington, D.C., to deny Republicans a quorum to enact voting restrictions. Other GOP-led states have introduced or passed dozens of election-related bills following Trump’s repeated baseless claims that the election was stolen. In Arizona, where Biden won the presidential race, Republicans are also conducting a costly and controversial audit of ballots in the state’s largest county.
