**Viral News Snippet:**
**🚨 CLAIM: BREAKING – Texas Election Results Trigger Automatic Recount After 0.03% Margin; Late-Night ‘Server Glitch’ in Harris County Adds 22,000 Votes**
*What we’re seeing:* A viral post on X is claiming that in a nail-biting State House district race, a "glitch" in Harris County's reporting system added 22,000 ballots to the total at 2:00 AM CST, flipping a Republican lead into a 187-vote Democratic win. The post calls for an immediate federal investigation, accusing the county of "rigging the system."
⭐ **THE FACTS: REAL vs. FAKE**
**REAL:** Texas law (Election Code § 216.001) mandates an **automatic recount** if the margin of victory is less than 10% of the total votes cast—or if the difference is fewer than 1,000 votes in a race with more than 100,000 ballots. As of this morning, two State House races are within that threshold.
**FAKE: The "server glitch adding 22,000 votes" did not happen.** Harris County officials confirmed to local station KTRK that the 2:00 AM "batch" was a routine, pre-scheduled upload of **mail-in and provisional ballots** that had been verified earlier in the day. "There was no glitch," a county spokesperson stated. "The 22,000 total is consistent with our reported outstanding ballots from yesterday."
**REAL:** However, election integrity groups and the Texas Secretary of State's office are indeed **investigating a separate issue**—a software error in **Collin County** (north of Dallas) that briefly showed a 12% tabulation discrepancy on an internal dashboard. That error was corrected within 38 minutes and did **not** affect the official certified totals.
**VERDICT