County officials in Texas say they are in the dark following ‘audit’ announcement

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Hours soon after former President Donald Trump fired off a letter to GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott demanding an audit of the 2020 presidential election final results, the Texas secretary of state’s place of work appeared to comply. A Thursday night push release from the office mentioned that “the Secretary of Point out has the authority to carry out a total and extensive forensic audit of any election and has already begun the method in Texas’ two most significant Democrat counties and two greatest Republican counties — Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin for the 2020 election.”

Further than that, statewide Texas officers made available tiny clarity. Abbott’s place of work referred queries about the audit to the secretary of state’s place of work. The secretary of state occupation is now vacant in Texas and other officers in that business did not answer to requests for remark.

Officials in Dallas, Harris and Tarrant counties claimed they had not nonetheless acquired any requests from the secretary of state’s office for facts or components that would be relevant for a put up-election audit. Collin County officers failed to right away reply to CNN’s inquiry.

Just one Texas official instructed CNN that even officials within the secretary of state’s workplace have been unaware of any audit underway.

The shock announcement came the identical day Trump wrote a sharply worded letter to Abbott demanding that Texas — a condition Trump carried in 2020 — start a write-up-election audit. Texas’ apparent choice to go ahead with this kind of a critique will come as Republicans in states which include Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona have solid forward with partisan assessments that look intended to undermine the 2020 election results and exhibit area Republicans’ fealty to Trump. The closing success of the assessment in Arizona observed a vote tally nearly equivalent to the a person done by Maricopa County.

“Texans know voting fraud transpired in some of their counties. Let’s get to the base of the 2020 presidential election scam!” Trump wrote in his letter to Abbott, even even though there was no proof of substantial fraud in Texas or any other state in the 2020 presidential election.

Democrats in the Lone Star State were fast to tear into Abbott for showing up to acquiesce to Trump’s demands.

“This is a weak governor, openly and shamelessly getting his orders from a disgraced previous President. Governor Abbott is throwing away taxpayer money to trample on Texans’ freedom to vote, all in purchase to appease his puppeteer,” said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, a Democrat. “As the previous Republican Secretary of Point out pointed out: Texas experienced a thoroughly clean and reasonable election.”

In Harris County, Judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat, tweeted, “Democracy is not a video game. These fake audits are an affront to all voters, & pure pandering to the sorts of extremists that stormed our Capitol.”

Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria also denounced the drive as another endeavor to undermine Americans’ faith in elections.

“We have viewed countless tries to delegitimize the 2020 election,” Longoria claimed Thursday. “Today’s steps characterize an additional assault by officials on our communities’ belief in elections.”

In Tarrant County, a GOP stronghold that President Joe Biden narrowly flipped in 2020, the county reported in a assertion that it plans to comply with requests from the secretary of state’s business even though no info had been requested so considerably.

Tarrant County Choose Glen Whitley, a Republican, presented a far more reducing evaluation of the thrust.

“The conspiracy theorists who want to appear up with all these approaches or reasons why this election was not suitable — they may well really very well discover a little something else [to doubt],” Whitley instructed the Texas Tribune. “It truly is time to move on.”