LBB Ponies Up Cash for Election Audit
Amid Scramble to Keep Trump at Bay

Capitol Inside
November 19, 2021

Governor Greg Abbott announced on Friday that he sought and received a special appropriation from GOP legislative leaders for an administrative election audit that he refused to have the Texas Legislature consider in special session this year in a major snub to Donald Trump.

Abbott approved a transfer of $4 million to Secretary of State John Scott's office to set up a new election audit division after asking Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan on Thursday to formally propose the funding today. Abbott didn't say where the state budget would be cut to make the outlay that the governor and lawmakers hadn't anticipated in the two-year spending plan that they endorsed in regular session.

GOP leaders apparently determined that the unexpected infusion for the SOS to be a way to pacify Trump and the party's new right-wing base after the former president pressured Abbott and Phelan without success this fall for an election audit bill that Patrick moved through the Senate in the second and third special sessions in 2021.

The Republican governor pulled the audit that the Legislative Budget Board voted to fund from his sleeve on the same day that Trump demanded that Abbott include the proposal in the third special session call. Abbott raised eyebrows when he claimed that night that he'd actually had an election audit under way in the secretary of state's office months before he filled the top position there several weeks ago with Scott's appointment.

Trump complained initially that the bureaucratic Abbott audit would be an insufficient response to the email decree that he'd issued in no uncertain terms. Trump took aim at Phelan eventually when the House declined to take action on the Senate proposal - branding the Texas speaker as a weak leader who could expect a primary challenge from a candidate who the ex-president vowed to field against him in 2022.

The LBB vote was Phelan's first official show of support for an election audit - a proposal that seemed patently absurd in a state that Trump carried in 2020 when he defeated Democratic President Joe Biden here by almost 6 percentage points. There have been no apparent signs of a primary foe emergence up to now in Phelan's district where he's based in Beaumont.

Trump appeared to be bluffing as someone who'd probably never heard the Texas House speaker's name before someone in his camp floated the notion of the email threats. But Trump has endorsed Abbott for a new term next year - and the lack of movement on some kind of election audit or at least the appearance of such a review could be seen as an act of defiance and disrespect at a time the ex-president is tightened his grip on the GOP.

The Republicans in Austin haven't appeared to be concerned that they're giving the appearance that the public has lost faith in the Texas election system since Abbott and Patrick were elected as the state's top two leaders initially in 2014. That hadn't been the case until Trump's baseless election challenge and the GOP's attempts to capitalize on it here with the most restrictive voting law based on false impressions of significant voter fraud in Texas.

Abbott defended the request that the LBB filled immediately.

"Ensuring the integrity of our elections is critical to our democracy, and the Texas Secretary of State's office deserves the resources and support needed to thoroughly complete this ongoing task," Abbott said in an email this afternoon. "The people of Texas must have trust and confidence in the election process, as well as the outcomes of our elections, which is why the state of Texas will transfer funding needed so that the Texas Secretary of State can create a division dedicated entirely to this important issue."

 

 


 

 

 


 

 

 

 

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