Texas Democratic Party officials are worried the results of the state primary will be delayed due to changes in the state’s mechanism for reporting results, the Texas Tribune reported on Wednesday.
The Texas Secretary of State’s office told the Democratic officials on January 23 that the mechanism by which elections are reported in the state may delay the results due to complex calculations that determine how many delegates each candidate receives. The state recently upgraded its reporting mechanism to take those calculations into account.
“They basically said that’s not built out yet,” Glen Maxey, director of special projects for the Party, told the Tribune. Manny Garcia, executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, said a delay by the Secretary of State’s office in reporting the results of the primary would be a “violation of the public trust.”
“The public deserves to see the vote and the delegate results on election night, and we urge the Texas Secretary of State’s office not to leave Texas voters and our nation in the dark,” Garcia said in a statement on Wednesday.
The results of the Iowa Caucus were delayed by a systemic failure in the result-reporting app used by the state’s Democratic Party. The failure was lamented by Democrats and mocked by Republicans.
“You know, if I’m a first time voter when I came out and I voted, and the results are not coming in for 16 hours, you know, it’s a little bit disconcerting,” Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.) commented.
“The same Democrats who want to take over everyone’s healthcare and micromanage the entire economy couldn’t even organize their own traditional Iowa caucuses?” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) wrote in a tweet.