BuzzFeed News: Republicans Are Laying The Groundwork For Endless Election “Audits” That Go Long Past Trump

Republicans are laying the groundwork for candidates to follow former president Donald Trump’s election-denying playbook, creating the potential for vote “audits” up and down the ballot for years to come.

Of most concern to election experts and voting rights advocates is Texas’s SB 47, a bill Republicans are currently fast-tracking through the state legislature. It would allow any candidate or party chair to force multiple inquiries into anything they view as an election “irregularity.” These inquiries would not require any burden of proof and could be pursued for potentially years after an election is over, all at the expense of taxpayers. …

Steph Gómez, the associate director of Common Cause Texas, said in an interview she thought the audits would only cause chaos and sow further distrust in elections. “I think the public will be confused. Like, you know, I’m confused and I do this every day,” she said.

“Texans have actual issues that they need their state leadership to be focusing on,” she added. “Like, for example, the winter is coming, right, and like, I do not know for certain that I’m not going to be left to freeze in my home again.”

During this week’s hearing on the bill, she told senators, “It’s embarrassing that state leadership dropped everything to respond to a tweet from a staffer of a former president, neither of which are actual Texas residents.”