Dallas County’s request for a recount of last week’s election after it discovered a discrepancy between the number of voters who signed in and the actual ballots counted will be heard by a district court judge on Tuesday.

The county’s election chief, Toni Pippins-Poole, filed a request to reopen the election late Friday after ballots from 44 vote tabulating machines were not included in the final tally that officials had submitted, according to court papers. Without knowing how many votes are at issue, it’s unclear whether the outcomes of any races will change.

State law stipulates that ballots must be counted continuously after the polls close. Once officials have stopped tallying votes, the election is considered completed. Even though the results are unofficial until the parties approve them, a judge must order any additional ballot counting. Judge Emily G. Tobolowsky will consider the recount request.

Between the two parties, more than 317,000 ballots — 233,014 Democratic and 83,997 Republican — were counted last week, according to unofficial results on Dallas County’s election website. Democratic turnout, in particular, nearly hit a record — second only to 2008 when 298,612 Democrats voted.

Pippins-Poole said in an affidavit filed with the petition that the problems with the totals were uncovered after the polls closed on March 3, when election officials couldn’t resolve the difference between the number of voters who signed in at some polling places with the number of ballots received from those places.

This was the first primary election in which Dallas County used new voting machines, called “ballot makers.” As part of the voting process, individuals insert a blank sheet of paper into a voting machine and use a touch screen to make their selection. When they’re done, the machine prints out their choices with a bar code that represents the decisions. Voters than feed that printout into a separate machine, known as a vote tabulator, which tallies all the ballots and stores that information on a portable hard drive. Those drives are taken to a central location to be counted for the final total.

As part of its transition to the new voting technology, Dallas County commissioners stressed the need for a paper backup to ensure every vote was counted.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, said every election has some sort of problem. However, uncounted ballots are a rare phenomenon.

“There will be growing pains in counties like Dallas that are embracing new technology and countywide voting," he said. "And these kinds of things are magnified in election years when you have more voters and the stakes are high.”

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that county parties confirm the results of the primary before they are official.