San Saba County, Texas: 2020 Primary

[catographer]

What’s up with San Saba’s Presidential primary results? Texas’ official election night reporting site has Warren winning with 28%. CNN, Atlas, and WashPo show the same thing. However, NYT and Politico show Biden winning San Saba with 35%.

I’m inclined to believe the official results with Warren winning it, but it just seems a bit suspect. Similar rural tiny counties in that area voted Biden, and the county was heavily HRC in 2016 too. Why would Warren win some random tiny rural conservative Texas county?
Also, Sanders did unusually poorly in 5th place; him and Biden have fewer votes in the official count than they do in the NYT result.

I’m guessing that it’s an entry error of some kind. What do you guys think?

[DINGO Joe]

I saw that too and have no idea. Warren did win around 10% of the vote in counties around San Saba so it's possible it's just a random quirk.  Another amusing rural TX county is Somervell which Bernie won 67-66 against Hillary and 95-94 vs Biden (with lots of other votes)

[jimrtex]

San Saba is the Pecan Capital of the World. I think the election results are nuts as well.

On the state website there is zero rolloff for the down ballot races.

For President, Senator, and the last Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 4:

County	President	Senator	CoCA, Place 4
Coleman	163	148	146
Concho	65	60	53
McCulloch	156	136	132
Menard	61	58	50
Mills	102	95	86
San Saba	104	104	104

That is about like keeping a 2 and 7, and drawing three cards to complete an inside straight.

In Texas, primaries are conducted by the political parties, though they make it look like it is being done by the SOS and counties.

The San Saba Democratic Party conducts the primary in the county, then does a local canvass. They forward those results to the Texas Democratic Party who does the statewide canvass (essentially just totaling all the county results). The official results (certified by the TDP not the SOS) are posted on the SOS website.

For a race like the US Senate race, the TDP will determine that a runoff between Hegar and West is required. They will post that on the SOS website, and then inform the county chairs so that they may prepare the ballot for the primary runoff.

After the primary runoff, the county canvass, and state canvass, the TDP will certify their senate nominee, so that SOS will place him or her on the general election ballot.

For the presidential preference primary, they will simply use the results to allocate delegates. This is totally outside the domain of the SOS.

So if we assume the results were hacked, there are a number of places where that might have occurred.

[catographer]

Excellent analysis, thank you for that Jimtrex. Something fishy is definitely up in San Saba.
Reminds me a bit of Marengo County, AL in its 2008 GOP Presidential primary. I was looking thru the results last week and it had a very bizarrely high vote total... my research finds that the consensus is that it was an error but it wasn’t corrected cuz it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

[jimrtex]

Excellent analysis, thank you for that Jimtrex. Something fishy is definitely up in San Saba.
Reminds me a bit of Marengo County, AL in its 2008 GOP Presidential primary. I was looking thru the results last week and it had a very bizarrely high vote total... my research finds that the consensus is that it was an error but it wasn’t corrected cuz it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

We might be able to find out how many people voted in the Democratic primary. The number of votes shown by the NYT is quite s bit more, around 140. It is looking like a whole substitution of the results was made.

It used to be that when local elections were decided in the Democratic primary, voters might skip the presidential or senatorial election, not wanting to interfere, but wanted to able to vote for their sheriff or county commissioner. This doesn't happen so much now that most local elections are decided in the Republican primary.

I have sent an e-mail to the SOS. It might be a bit difficult difficult to find out what happened. People get defensive. (1) It didn't happen. (2) What does it matter. (3) It's not my fault.

Though the political parties conduct the primaries, they are state actors, and subject in FOIA and the like.

[catographer]

Excellent analysis, thank you for that Jimtrex. Something fishy is definitely up in San Saba.
Reminds me a bit of Marengo County, AL in its 2008 GOP Presidential primary. I was looking thru the results last week and it had a very bizarrely high vote total... my research finds that the consensus is that it was an error but it wasn’t corrected cuz it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

We might be able to find out how many people voted in the Democratic primary. The number of votes shown by the NYT is quite s bit more, around 140. It is looking like a whole substitution of the results was made.

It used to be that when local elections were decided in the Democratic primary, voters might skip the presidential or senatorial election, not wanting to interfere, but wanted to able to vote for their sheriff or county commissioner. This doesn't happen so much now that most local elections are decided in the Republican primary.

I have sent an e-mail to the SOS. It might be a bit difficult difficult to find out what happened. People get defensive. (1) It didn't happen. (2) What does it matter. (3) It's not my fault.

Though the political parties conduct the primaries, they are state actors, and subject in FOIA and the like.

Thank you for doing that, I look forward to seeing how that turns out.

Another point for reference, similarly-sized neighboring Mills County:
                            2016           2020               HRC 2016 General election
Mills County           94 votes      102 votes       243 votes
San Saba County    86 votes      104* votes     293 votes

[jimrtex]

The SOS replied that the county party is responsible for keying in the results on the SOS web site.

I assume the NYT, Politico, NPR etc. all got their results from the SOS website on election night. State law requires the political parties to report results every 15 minutes, just like happens on general election machine.

They're probably using county voting machines and it might be someone from the the county clerk's office doing the actual transmitting.

AP or whoever is not going to develop a second source for a county that has 1/200 of the statewide vote, and where Republican turnout is 10X that of the Democrats.