A manual recount shall be conducted in preference to an electronic recount and an electronic recount using a corrected program shall be conducted in preference to an electronic recount using the same program as the original count.
Chads are the little bits of paper that are dislodged from punchcard ballots during voting.
Indented chads have been at the center of debate between Republican Bush and Democrat Al Gore over manual recounts of the presidential vote in Florida. The Bush campaign has objected to the manual recounts, saying they lead to election officials having to reinterpret the results of the election and the intentions of voters by subjective, rather than objective, means. Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett said Friday that the difference in Texas is that the state has uniform election rules statewide, whereas Florida does not. The rules in Texas have not caused any problems or challenges from candidates, said Anne McGeehan, director of elections at the Texas Secretary of State's office. The rules were adopted in 1993, before Bush took office as governor.