Philip Bump, Washington Post:”It’s probably safe to assume that Donald Trump isn’t terribly concerned about undermining the results of the presidential election in Texas. After all, he won the state by six points and, so far, his flailing attempts to raise questions about his loss have centered on the states where he actually did. But Texas state Rep. Steve Toth (R) has very much taken his party’s rhetoric about voter fraud to heart. So the legislator from suburban Houston is proposing that there be a ‘forensic audit’ of the results of the 2020 contest in his state. That science-ish-sounding term is very much in vogue at the moment, and we’ll come back to it.”
“Toth’s proposal, though, is accompanied by a very important asterisk: It would only require investigation by counties with more than 415,000 people, as The Washington Post’s Eva Ruth Moravec reported on Thursday. There are 13 such counties in the state, 10 of which voted for President Biden last year. The 13th-most populous county, Cameron County, preferred Biden by a 13-point margin. If you kept going down the ranks of most-populous counties, incidentally, the next five most populous counties all preferred Trump. Convenient place to stop the review! But Toth is not shy about the convenience at play. Moravec spoke with him and he explained his thinking: [W]hile Toth said he would support a statewide effort, he also argued the undertaking would be too expensive and time-consuming. Asked if he would consider including some smaller counties, Toth replied, ‘What’s the point? I mean, all the small counties are red.’“