The Latest: San Antonio results delayed by software snafu

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Latest on Tuesday’s primary election in Texas (all times local):

2 a.m.

Election results from San Antonio — Texas’ second-largest city — are delayed by hours due to problems with the software used by county election officials.

Bexar County election administrator Jacquelyn Callanen said early Wednesday that her team has been unable to produce complete numbers because the program they use won’t consolidate results coming in from across the county.

Callanen says she’s confident officials have accurately recorded all votes cast in Tuesday’s election. She says, “We just have to figure out how to get the software to consolidate it.”

More than 230,000 people voted in Bexar County, including 110,000 voters in person Tuesday. The problems delayed results in some closely watched primary races.

Callanen said she’s hopeful final results will be available later Wednesday.

1 a.m.

Joe Biden has won Texas’ Democratic presidential primary. The state has 228 delegates at stake, the second biggest prize of the night.

More than 2 million people had already voted in Texas even before polls opened for Tuesday’s primary. The state, which has long been reliably Republican, is growing increasingly bluer amid a demographics change in Texas.

Biden held a rally in Dallas on Monday night, where he showcased two of his newest supporters and former rivals, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke. Pete Buttigieg endorsed Biden earlier in the night in Dallas.

Biden has also won Massachusetts, Arkansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Virginia. Bernie Sanders has won California, Utah, Vermont and Colorado.

12:50 a.m.

Former White House physician and one-time nominee to head the Department of Veterans Affairs Ronny Jackson has advanced to a runoff in the Republican primary for a rural Texas congressional seat.

Jackson’s VA nomination by President Donald Trump in 2018 was derailed by allegations of drinking on the job and over-prescribing drugs. He denied those allegations.

Jackson retired from the Navy in 2019 and launched his political campaign. He seeks the seat held by retiring Rep. Mac Thornberry in a district considered safely Republican.

Despite his past history with Trump, the president waited until this past weekend to endorse Jackson to make it to a runoff.

He’ll face agriculture advocate Josh Winegarner.

12:30 a.m.

A grandson of former President George H.W. Bush has failed in his bid for a congressional seat in Texas.

It’s a somewhat stunning defeat for 34-year-old Pierce Bush, who carried into Tuesday both his famous family name and the endorsement of outgoing Republican Rep. Pete Olson. It also raises questions about whether the Bush family’s sharp personal clashes with President Donald Trump turned off Republican voters.

Advancing to the May runoff are Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls and conservative activist Kathaleen Wall.

The winner of that runoff will face Democrat Sri Kulkarni, who lost a close race to Olson in 2018 and was re-nominated Tuesday.

11:50 p.m.

Former longtime Rep. Pete Sessions has advanced to a runoff for the Republican nomination in a rural central Texas congressional district, two years after being ousted from a different seat.

Sessions emerged from a crowded field in the GOP primary amid criticism that he cherry-picked the district to return to Washington.

Sessions served 22 years in a Dallas district that flipped to Democrat in 2018. Sessions chose to run for Congress this year in a more conservative, mostly rural area that includes his boyhood hometown of Waco.

The district’s Republican incumbent, Rep. Bill Flores, is retiring.

It was not immediately clear who Sessions will face in the May 26 runoff.

11:45 p.m.

A man who has called President Donald Trump a child rapist and posts images of women’s breasts on social media has advanced to a Republican primary runoff for a seat on the influential Texas State Board of Education.

Robert Morrow has long been a thorn for Texas Republicans with his outrageous behavior and provocative statements. He’ll face either Lani Popp, a San Antonio area public school speech pathologist, or Inga Cotton, who heads a nonprofit that supports families choosing charter schools, in the May runoff for the central Texas district.

The 15-member board helps set policy and curriculum for the state’s public school system.

Morrow’s top campaign issue is to “impeach, convict and remove Donald Trump” and throw him in prison. In a primary guide prepared by the League of Women Voters, Morrow said he would eliminate a major source of public school funding, that high school students should be offered elective classes on the safe use of assault rifles, and senior girls should have classes on pole dancing.

Morrow embarrassed the GOP when he was elected chairman of the party in Travis County in 2016. He was forced to give up that position a few months later when he later filed to run for president.

10:45 p.m.

Rep. Kay Granger has survived a challenge from a conservative firebrand who accused her of being disloyal to President Donald Trump.

Trump had endorsed Granger against Chris Putnam, a former city councilman from suburban Fort Worth. It was Granger’s first serious challenge in the heavily Republican district since she was first elected in 1997. She is the top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee and the only woman among Texas’ 23 Republican House members.

Trump had endorsed Granger back in December when he tweeted she had been a “strong supporter of our #MAGA Agenda.”

Granger’s district in around Fort Worth includes a Lockheed Martin plant that builds the F-35 fighter jet. Over the years, she has been a key force in securing more military funding. But Putnam argued that she should have used her perch over House spending to secure more funding for Trump’s border wall.

10:22 p.m.

Democratic Senate candidate MJ Hegar has advanced to a runoff election in Texas after falling short of capturing the nomination outright.

Hegar is a former Air Force helicopter pilot who’s seeking to unseat the Republican incumbent, John Cornyn. Cornyn was renominated for a fourth term on Tuesday and is seen as a heavy favorite in November in a state where a Democrat hasn’t won a Senate seat since the 1970s.

Hegar’s challengers include Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez, a liberal political organizer, and Royce West, a long-serving state senator.

The runoff is set for May 26.

8:35 p.m.

Election officials in Houston are sending additional voting machines to polling places with long lines.

Harris County elections supervisor Michael Winn says between 90 and 100 “reserve machines” are going to some of the county’s more than 800 polling locations. Anyone in Houston who arrived at a poll by 7 p.m. CST can vote as long as they stay in line.

Winn says some machines are normally held back in case of long waits or if a replacement is needed. He could not immediately say how many machines had been sent where.

Voters across Houston and Harris County have reported long wait times. Ahmed King, a radiology technician, said Tuesday he voted only after giving up on long lines in majority African-American areas and heading to a precinct in a predominantly white and Latino neighborhood.

8 p.m.

President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn have been renominated by Texas Republicans as primary polls across the state close.

Most polls closed at 7 p.m. CST, with El Paso and other areas in the Mountain Time Zone closing an hour later. Texas’ Democratic primary is being closely watched nationwide on Super Tuesday to see who will emerge to challenge Trump and Cornyn in November.

Long lines remain at some polling sites in Houston and other parts of the state. Anyone who was in line at poll closing time is allowed to cast a ballot.

In Harris County, home to Houston, elections supervisor Michael Winn blamed Republicans’ refusal to allow for the sharing of voting equipment. Instead, many polling sites have had much longer lines for the Democratic primary than the Republican primary.

Advocates have highlighted long lines in majority African-American and Latino neighborhoods.

7:45 p.m.

A Houston radiology technician says he voted only after giving up on long lines in majority African-American areas and heading to a precinct in a predominantly white and Latino neighborhood.

Ahmed King said Tuesday that after failing to find his normal polling place open, he went to a second location that was also closed. He eventually tried to cast his Democratic primary vote at Texas Southern University and a church, but the lines at those predominately African-American locations exceeded an hour and he didn’t have the patience so he left.

The 46-year-old King said he later found out from a friend that the line was short at school in predominately white and Latino neighborhood 15 miles away, so he drove there, saying at least he could sit in his air-conditioned car and listen to music instead of standing. He said he was able to cast his vote there with no wait.

King says, “I first tried to vote at 1 p.m. Central time and finally got done at 6:05. I have never had an experience like this before.”

Other voters across Houston and Harris County have reported long wait times. Harris County’s elections supervisor Michael Winn blamed Republicans’ refusal to allow the sharing of voting equipment. But Mary Moreno, a spokeswoman for the Texas Organizing Project, said the county and the state needed to better prepare.

7 p.m.

The polls are closed in Tuesday’s primary election in all but the far west of Texas as reports emerge of long lines and frustrated voters in some cities.

Anyone in line at 7 p.m. CST is still allowed to vote. But with strong interest in Texas’ Democratic presidential primary, voters at several polling sites have reported delays of an hour or more.

In Harris County, home to Houston, elections supervisor Michael Winn blamed Republicans’ refusal to allow for the sharing of voting equipment. Instead, many polling sites have had much longer lines for the Democratic primary than the Republican primary, in which President Donald Trump and Sen. John Cornyn are expected to win easily.

El Paso and other areas in the Mountain Time Zone are still open for another hour.

6:20 p.m.

The supervisor of elections in Harris County, which encompasses Houston, blames long lines at some polling locations on having to treat both parties the same even though only one has a contested presidential primary.

Michael Winn said Tuesday that he tried to have a shared primary where voters no matter their party would have used the same equipment to cast their ballots, but Republicans refused.

Winn said if he had tried to give Democrats more machines, the Republicans “would have cried all the way to Washington, D.C., to complain about disenfranchisement.”

The Texas Organizing Project said earlier Tuesday that some voters in majority African-American and Latino neighborhoods are going location to location to vote. The advocacy group alleges some people have given up altogether. Spokeswoman Mary Moreno says it’s disheartening that “Texas has some of the lowest voting rates and we are making it harder for people.”

Winn said residents are voting in the Democratic primary at a 2-to-1 margin compared to Republicans.

Voters in line when polls close in Harris County at 7 p.m. can cast a ballot.

6 p.m.

The Republican chairman of a county in South Texas says online claims that GOP voters can’t cast ballots Tuesday are caused by confusion about how the primary election works.

Ross Barrera is the interim party chairman in Starr County, located in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. He responded to claims online that Republicans were being turned away Tuesday.

Starr County’s Republican Party has no candidates running for local office and can only afford to operate one local polling location, while Democrats have several locations oped for voting today.

Barrera said many voters want to vote for both President Donald Trump and a well-known Democratic candidate for local sheriff. He says he’s explained that they need to take a Democratic ballot to vote for the sheriff.

According to Barrera, as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, only 62 Republican ballots had been cast in the primary. Roughly 2,700 people in the county voted for Trump in 2016.

4:30 p.m.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office received reports that voters were receiving robocalls stating election misinformation related to Tuesday’s primary.

Spokesman Stephen Chang says the calls were telling voters that Republicans would vote on Tuesday while Democrats and independents would vote on Wednesday.

The secretary of state’s office has the number the calls were made from and has reported the calls to federal authorities.

It’s unclear who is responsible for the calls, which were made across the state.

1:45 p.m.

Kathryn Cavanaugh cast her vote in Dallas in the Democratic primary for Bernie Sanders, saying she thinks he’s the candidate that can rally voters.

Thirty-year-old Cavanaugh is among voters in Texas choosing from a field of Democratic presidential candidates on Super Tuesday. She says, “I think that someone who is very firm in what they stand for is going to do well, especially in this upcoming election.”

In Houston, 28-year-old Racchel Cabrera agreed, saying she thinks Sanders, a Vermont senator, has the best chance to defeat Republican President Donald Trump in November. She said she voted for Sanders based on his “consistency and lifelong activism for equality.”

But Democrat Daniel Navarro in Dallas decided to cast his vote for former Vice President Joe Biden. The 40-year-old said he wants someone who can work across party lines, and added he thinks Sanders’ ideas “are too out there.”

Meanwhile Democrat Sally Climber, who is 39, said that while she thinks the majority of Texas Democrats would go for a centrist candidate, her views are further to the left, so she voted for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

10:45 a.m.

Voting got off to a slow start in Travis County on Tuesday because many election workers did not show up.

The Travis County Clerk’s Office says multiple election judges and poll workers were no-shows for Tuesday’s primary election. The office says some workers cited fears of coronavirus as a reason for not showing up Tuesday.

The election office says it began implementing emergency procedures, with elections staff and others employees filling in as poll workers.

Multiple polling places had wait times of 20 minutes or longer, according to the clerk’s office.

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The item on Pete Sessions has been corrected to indicate that the retiring Republican incumbent is Bill Flores, not Pete Flores.