After two hours discussing their distrust of electronic voting machines and tabulators, the Dallas County Republican Party voted Monday night to hand-count paper ballots cast on Election Day during its March primary.

With more than 49,000 Republican ballots expected to be cast on March 3, the endeavor using hand-marked paper ballots would make Dallas County the largest jurisdiction in the United States to hand-count, according to Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director for Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks technology in elections.

The decision was made by roughly 200 Republican party precinct chairs, who stood from their seats to register their votes in support when they gathered in Storehouse Church's auditorium. No more than a dozen stood against the measure, but their logistical questions and concerns sparked raucous pushback from the crowd.

"The biggest part of starting a journey is the first step and I think that's what we've done and I think that a lot of people will be watching to see what happens here," the county's party chairman Allen West said in an interview after the meeting.

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Election experts say the cost, time demands and odds for human error make hand-counting less reliable than machine systems. But in pushing for the change, speakers on Monday echoed unverified claims made since the 2020 presidential election about manipulation of ballots, interference with tabulators and unreliable tests for voting machines.

"Let's not be naive about this: Election fraud does occur on the local level," said party member Nate Weymouth. "Let's start now making changes."

The plan approved Monday is contingent upon securing sufficient staffing, funding and project management, according to the resolution.

Party member Stan Woodward said the effort would be capped at $500,000, but when a precinct chair asked for a financial analysis, he declined to provide exact costs or the number of election workers needed to execute the plan.

"If we can't get the money, we can't get the volunteers, we're going to exit out," party member Preeti Malladi told the crowd.

In June, a task force within the party began investigating the feasibility of hand-counting ballots during the March primary, prompted by doubts about the security of Dallas County's machine systems, West said.

While the party explored the idea of also hand-counting ballots cast during early voting, the plan approved Monday does not apply to those ballots.

Political parties typically contract with counties to run elections. The Dallas County Elections Department uses paper ballots that voters insert into machines to cast their selections -- not hand-marked paper ballots. The machine-marked ballots are then put into tabulators.

During early voting in Texas, parties can dictate how their primaries are counted but not the manner in which people vote, such as whether to use hand-marked ballots. That is up to the Dallas County Elections Administrator.

But on Election Day, parties have the authority to decide both how their primaries are counted and how people mark their ballots, prompting the Republican's plan to focus on that single day.

The plan approved Monday also depends on the party finalizing "an acceptable contract" with the Dallas County Elections Department, the resolution states.

In a separate vote, the executive committee overwhelmingly decided it would not enter a joint contract with the Dallas County Democratic Party like it had done since 2022. This means both parties will use separate equipment and election workers within the same voting locations.

Malladi, who served on the hand counting task force, could not answer a question from a precinct chair asking how much this will cost.

The Republicans will also not participate in the county-wide voting program Dallas County has used since 2019, which allows a voter to cast a ballot at any precinct no matter where they live.

Instead, Republicans will revert to using precincts on Election Day, but because the county controls early voting, will continue to use countywide voting centers during early voting.

Deputy Elections Administrator Malissa Kouba previously told The Dallas Morning News that one party choosing to hand count ballots on Election Day would trigger the need to move to precinct-based voting for both parties.

Texas law requires vote totals be submitted to the state 24 hours after polls close on election day. Party member Matt Patrick raised concern about the potential for lawsuits and legal liability if they fail to meet that deadline.

"There's a lot of hope here and there's a lot of projection but there's no real hard evidence that we're going to be able to pull this off," Patrick said

Some speakers evoked the political fervor ignited by last week's assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, suggesting that followers of his Turning Point USA nonprofit could help in recruiting election workers.

Patrick asked whether the party had done an analysis to accurately project the number of voters they can expect at the polls in order to have the correct number of ballots ready, which drew boos from the crowd. During his several rounds of comments throughout the discussion, the room largely heckled him as he asked for specifics about costs and feasibility.

Party members noted the need to advance the plan while there was momentum with a Republican-controlled federal government.

Malladi said now is the time to move to hand counting ballots with "a friendly administration in D.C."

The Republicans' hand count on election day will also involve using paper poll books to check-in voters at the polls and assign the ballot style corresponding to their address.

Dallas County uses electronic pollbooks, but last year a malfunction caused about 4,000 people to cast ballots tied to precincts where they did not live. The glitch was unrelated to voting machines and tabulators and did not affect any race outcome.

West, the party chair, previously pointed to this issue as a reason for moving to hand-counting.

During his 25 years in uniform and serving in three combat zones, West told the crowd, "I never heard a soldier say 'I can't.' They always said 'this is what I can do,' and I think we need to have that same attitude."

Dallas County Republicans vote to hand-count its March primary's Election Day