Texas Democratic Party says Super Tuesday delegate totals will require extra step

AUSTIN, Texas -  Super Tuesday delegate totals will likely come in later than usual in Texas. 

The Texas Secretary of State created a new reporting system that has not been completed yet. “What happens in Texas will tell people, pretty much, who the democratic nominee will be and so we're going to get it right,” said Glen Maxey, the primary director of the Texas Democratic Party.  

With the new system, getting it right will require a little extra patience. “They had promised that the system would be there for this election, it won’t totally be there. We're going to still have to do some pen and paper math,” Maxey said. 

Maxey said he learned the system wouldn't be completely in operation two weeks ago. “What they were telling us was they would be reporting results from counties by countywide totals. Our delegates are allocated by senate districts, which bisect counties,” said Maxey.  
                
Without those numbers, Maxey feared the Democratic party wouldn't be able to report delegate totals. 
                
However, the Secretary of State's office sent FOX 7 Austin a statement to clarify that. "Election night returns for the March 3rd primary, including vote totals, will be reported in their usual manner and available on election night.

Additionally, any allegations that delegate allocations will not be reported on election night are categorically false.

In previous primaries, including the 2016 primary election, delegate allocations for both of Texas’ major parties on election night have been approximate allocations based on data self-reported by the counties. The delegate allocations will be reported in the same fashion for the March 3rd primary election," wrote Stephen Chang, director of communications for the Secretary of State’s office. 

“In a reversal yesterday the Secretary of State said, ‘Oh, we're going to have the counties manually enter this data,’ Maxey said. 

Raw votes will still be available on the Secretary of State’s website. However, allocating delegates will take a little extra effort. “There'll be a second step that the Texas Democratic Party will have to do, of then doing the math of allocating the delegates to those percentages, and we will be posting that on our website,” said Maxey.  

However, Maxey said he needs to know the full vote return for each senate district before he can start calculating that. “It may take us into the wee hours of the morning to get there, but we will get there. Hopefully on election night,” Maxey said. 

The Secretary of State's office sent out an email to county election officials Thursday to go over how that data should be entered.  Part of that email reads, “…we will report the Presidential race by Congressional and Senate district as we have in years past. You will see these added to the [Election Night Reporting] data entry screen in the next few days.”