Texas Sec of State's Office Announces 'Full Forensic Audit' of 2020 Election in Four Counties

Former US President Donald Trump earlier urged Texas Governor Greg Abbott to initiate an election audit in Texas, claiming that he heard Texas "wanted" one due to "big questions" the state has about the November election.

The Texas Secretary of State's Office on Thursday announced a "full forensic audit" of the 2020 presidential election in four counties - Dallas, Harris, Tarrant, and Collin.

The press release does not provide a lot of details about the audit process, only saying that Texas anticipates that "the legislature will provide funds for this purpose".

"Under existing Texas laws, the Secretary of State has the authority to conduct a full and comprehensive forensic audit of any election and has already begun the process in Texas' two largest Democrat counties and two largest Republican counties—Dallas, Harris, Tarrant, and Collin—for the 2020 election", the Secretary of State's Office stated.

The announcement comes shortly after former President Donald Trump, who has remained adamant that he won the 2020 election, urged Texas Governor Greg Abbott to launch an election audit.

According to Trump, Texans "want an election audit" despite his "big win in Texas".

"You know your fellow Texans have big questions about the November 2020 Election", Trump said in a letter to Abbott. "Let's get to the bottom of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam!"

Greg Abbott has not officially commented on Trump's calls.

James Melcher, a political scientist at the University of Maine in Farmington, has suggested a possible motivation for Trump to initiate a recount in Texas, a state that he "clearly won" in the 2020 presidential race.

"[...] He has put pressure on elected Republicans (and others) all over the country to do more investigation of the results. Usually, he’s done this in states that were close, like Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. Doing it in a state he clearly won is designed to cast doubt on the work of local election officials—most often Democrats—and above all to keep feeding the narrative that the election results are unreliable", Melcher asserted.

The former president and his supporters have refused to accept Joe Biden's victory in the November election, claiming that massive "voter fraud" marred Trump's "big win" in the race for the White House. Since November, Trump's legal team has been struggling to launch federal lawsuits and election audits in different states.

Yet, according to recent reports, one of the initiated recounts that took place in Arizona's Maricopa County, found that Biden still won, with even more votes than registered initially.

The debates around the results of the 2020 presidential election continue amid Texas recently passing a new election law, SB1, in a bid to protect "election integrity" by introducing new voting restrictions - in particular, limiting early voting and by mail, along with drive-thru voting, and increasing the role of observers in the election process. Democrats have decried the new law as something that undermines voting rights, especially for minorities and people of colour. Democratic legislators even fled Texas to Washington, DC, in order to block the initiative, but failed.