Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick is calling for new elections in Harris County after voting problems in November.

Austin, Texas – Lieutenant Governor. Dan Patrick called for a re-election in Harris County on Monday after voters struggled to vote in November. At some polling stations, there were not enough ballots for the voters who came.

“How many people went to vote but did not return? We don’t know,” Patrick said during a speech at the Republican Women’s Club Magic Circle. “That’s why we need new elections.”

A spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office said that only a court decision could lead to a re-run of the election.

Patrick joins other senior lawmakers, such as Gov. Greg Abbott, who said the issues could influence the outcome of a bitter local election won by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Hidalgo beat challenger Alexandra del Moral Miler, a well-funded GOP rival, by only about 18,000 votes, less than 2% of the total. Earlier this year, Maeler announced that she was disputing the results.

In late January, Abbott posted a news report on social media, KHOU 11, saying the ballot shortage was greater than originally reported and affected 121 polling stations.

“He is so big that he could influence the outcome of the election,” he wrote on Twitter. “This may require new elections. This would require LAWS that would prevent Harris Co. do it again.”

Patrick mentioned Abbott’s support for new county elections. His office did not immediately respond to a request for additional context from The Texas Tribune.

During a Senate hearing last week, Secretary of State Jane Nelson said a solution to the paper ballot shortage should be legislated and that Harris County’s November troubles were “completely unacceptable.”

Nadia Hakim, a spokesperson for the Harris County Election Administrator’s office, said the news report that Abbott and Patrick cited in their criticism was misleading. Hakim said the report compares turnout rates at individual polling stations in 2018, before the district allowed voters to vote at any polling station in the district, with turnout rates in 2022, when voters had the option.

“This comparison of apples and cabbages never makes it clear whether any site requested or received any additional documents,” Hakim said.

She said the Harris County Board of Elections began the November election with nearly 5 million ballot sheets, and more than 3 million sheets were returned after all ballots were cast.

“There is no doubt that there were more than enough paper ballots for the 350,000 voters who personally voted for the two-page ballot on Election Day,” Hakim said, adding that additional stocks of paper ballots were delivered to locations across the county. on election day.

The Harris County Board of Elections’ own report of the paper ballot shortage was inconclusive because officials said they had to rely on anecdotal information from election judges, and because the county does not have a tracking system to report whether a problem was resolved at the polls. plot. The report notes that 68 district judges were reminded of “the exhaustion of the initial amount of paper”, and 61 of them received additional paper. But the 22 alternates at those locations gave conflicting reports that they didn’t run out of paper.

The report does not say how quickly the paper was delivered, or if there was a period during which there was no paper at the polling stations to accept ballots.

Harris County, which recently had a Democratic-dominated local government, has long struggled with the release of race results on Election Night. This is partly due to the size of the population – it has almost 4.7 million people – and partly due to the length of the ballots, which can span several pages. But as the county became more democratic, the attacks from the state’s Republican leaders grew louder.

The state’s Restrictive Vote Act, passed in 2021, bans methods such as through and 24-hour voting that Democratic leaders used during the 2020 presidential election, which was held at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Republican candidates for Harris County office, including Miler, have filed multiple lawsuits against the county to challenge the 2022 election results.

Reporter Alexa Ura contributed to this report.

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This story comes from our partners KHOU 11 News at Texas Tribunenon-profit, non-partisan media organization that informs and engages with Texans about public policy, politics, government, and state issues.