Trump demands Texas Gov. Greg Abbott push for election audits, despite winning the state in 2020
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
- Trump wants Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to add an audit of the 2020 election to a special session agenda.
- The former president defeated Biden in the state by 5.6 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election.
- The demand comes just one day before Arizona is set to unveil the results of its sham "audit."
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
President Donald Trump won the state of Texas during the 2020 presidential election, but the former president is now demanding that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott push for an audit of the election.
"Despite my big win in Texas, I hear Texans want an election audit," the former president said in a statement. "You know your fellow Texans have big questions about the November 2020 Election."
-Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) September 23, 2021
Abbott recently called a third special legislative session into action in the hopes of redrawing the state's congressional map, restricting transgender students from participating in school sports teams that align with the gender they identify, and adding legislation regarding COVID-19 vaccination mandates.
The Texas legislature passed a new voting law during the second special legislative session that restricts the use of drive-through voting, adds additional ID requirements for absentee votes, and adds additional protections for partisan poll watchers among other changes. The second special session did not, however, include any provisions about an audit of the vote count.
To remedy this, Trump highlighted a new bill filed by state Rep. Steve Toth, which would allow for a forensic audit of the 2020 election, though only in the 13 most populous counties in the state, 10 of which voted a majority for President Joe Biden.
As noted in his release, Trump defeated Biden in the state of Texas by over 5 percentage points - more than 600,000 votes - in the 2020 election. An audit of the state's votes would not change the election's outcome, especially after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was unable to find any concrete proof of election fraud despite offering up a $1 million reward.
The call for an investigation into Texas' 2020 presidential election comes just one day before the group behind Arizona's flawed audit releases its findings.
The partisan review in Maricopa County, Arizona, commissioned by Republicans in the state Senate, has been marred from the beginning by a lack of transparency and professionalism, with outside experts saying the final product "should not be trusted."
The group leading the effort, Cyber Ninjas, is itself led by a conspiracy theorist, Doug Logan, who claimed the 2020 election was "rigged" months before ever counting any ballots.
Maricopa County Republicans - who audited the results and certified President Joe Biden's victory last year - have themselves opposed the review, which has been subsidized by some $5.7 million in support from right-wing donors and seen volunteers scan ballots for bamboo fibers in an apparent effort to prove they were made in China.
The process, which began in April, has even been described to Insider by the state Senate's "liaison" to the review, former GOP Secretary of State Ken Bennett, as "very odd."
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