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COMANCHE -- Adding up the vote totals on
election day has never been a completely simple process, but this
year’s general election was a particularly complicated affair, and
errors in reporting -- relatively small errors -- were made.
That is basically what County Clerk Ruby
Lesley reported to the Commissioners Court on Monday, November 20, as
it met to conduct an official canvass of the November 7 general
election votes.
Lesley noted that her office had spent
the eight working days between the election and the Monday canvass in
carefully checking the vote tally. Their efforts discovered errors in
the results reported on election night in six voting precincts, none
of which were in or near DeLeon.
The school bond election in Comanche,
which required multiple ballots in many voting precincts in the
southern end of the County, caused most of the problems.
Some election judges failed to note that
the electronic voting machines produced two sets of results, one with
the school bond vote, and a separate set of totals for voters in the
precinct who did not live in the Comanche ISD. They apparently picked
up only one set of electronic vote totals.
As a result, the unofficial totals on
election night, as well as those reported to the Texas Secretary of
State and published in the Free Press last week, were not completely
accurate.
Those oversights were caught the next
day, however, when the voting machine totals were compared by the
County Clerk’s office to the election judges’ tally sheets.
Fortunately, no election outcomes were changed by the errors.
Although she was aware of the
inaccuracies in the reported totals, County Clerk Lesley did not make
any changes to the reported vote totals until the voting canvass
process was completed.
Two of the six affected precincts also
failed to add in the straight party line ballot totals. A total of 35
Republican, one Libertarian and 21 Democrat ballots were not included
in the election judges’ tally sheets.
Additional errors were noted in the tally
of the early voting box where some totals were incorrectly reported,
and 14 ballots in one voting precinct were not included in the initial
voting report.
Commissioner Garry Steele emphasized,
“Just so we are clear on this now, there was no problems with the
electronic vote. It was human error in addition.”
Lesley added her agreement to Steele’s
statement. She said, “The problem is, it’s all new. This was the first
general election where they had to combine both deals (totals for both
school bond and non-school bond ballots).” She added that the machine
vote tallies were correct and that all of the problems originated from
human error in adding multiple sets of vote totals.
She continued, “All of this comes at the
end of the day when everyone has worked about 14 hours and they (the
election officials) are all exhausted.”
Commissioner Bobby Schuman expressed his
appreciation for the good work that the County Clerk’s office performs
in preparing for and overseeing the elections.
Lesley described the voting process as
much more confusing in the era of using both paper and electronic
voting. She noted that if only electronic voting machines were used,
the process would be much more simple to administer. “The more steps
you have, the more room you have for error,” she added. “You have
human error. That’s pretty much understood, especially when you have
something new.”
Lesley continued, “Now I don’t want to
criticize them (the election officials). Okay? They have done a good
job.”
Commissioners Schuman and Chris Biggs
added their statements of agreement and appreciation for the election
officials.
Commissioner Steele said, “I just want to
reiterate, that we did not have voting machine problems.” He noted
that all of the problems observed stemmed from manual tabulation of
voting totals from different sources, and that when the voting
machines were read out in the Clerk’s office, the correct totals were
produced.
Lesley added, “The machine part was the
only part that was correct. The paper part was where the errors were.
The machines did perfect.”
Lesley noted that the state requires a
spot check of a sample of the voting machines. This year, the
Secretary of State has selected voting precincts 5, 14 and 22 for a
hand count of ballots produced by their electronic voting machines.
Lesley said she will have to use people
not employed by or associated with the Clerk’s office to count the
paper ballots printed by the voting machines and verify the
electronically-reported totals.
Bobby Schuman again commented on how he
thought Lesley was doing an excellent job of serving as the County’s
chief elections officer.
Lesley stated that both she and the
election officials will learn from the problems encountered in this
election and will know what to look for to avoid similar future
problems.
Although it was not the Commissioners’
responsibility to canvass the Comanche ISD school bond election, she
reviewed the problems observed with that vote count. The largest part
of the change in totals reported on election night and later verified
totals involved a hand-written vote count of “78” which was later mis-interpreted
as “18”.
Commissioner Steele moved to accept the
vote canvass as presented by County Clerk Lesley. Commissioner
Schuman later seconded Steele’s motion and the vote of approval was
unanimous.
Commissioners also voted to approve
paying the election workers. After being advised that the pay rate for
election workers had been set at $6.00 per hour for at least two
years, Bobby Schuman offered a motion to increase the pay rate to
$7.50 an hour. Chris Biggs seconded and, again, the vote of approval
was unanimous.
The Commissioners also voted unanimously
to approve a prisoner housing agreement between Comanche County and
Burnet County, acting upon the request by Sheriff Jeff Lambert and his
assurance that it was the same standard contract at $35.00 per day as
used for other counties. |
