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Election error sparks resignation, recount

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Due to the atypical circumstances surrounding Williamson County's election returns, the county Elections Commission conducted a longer-than-normal meeting Monday to canvass the results.

On Friday, Nov. 17, Elections Administrator Debra Stacy announced her resignation (effective 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 20) after questions arose regarding the tabulation of early voting ballots, prompting a court-ordered recount.

A recount was initially an issue when the software from Electronic Systems and Software Inc. counted approximately 91,000 total ballots while voter sign-in sheets recorded approximately 84,500 voters. Elections officials found disturbing discrepancies in the early voting counts, said John Willingham, county human resources director.

A press release from Stacy's office originally pinned the miscount on the ES&S software program but Connie Watson, county public information officer, said further investigation revealed the input of the procedures by the election administrator was incorrect, causing some ballots to be counted multiple times.

“The software produces an auto report which shows you the keystrokes that were made during tabulation,” Watson said. “From their report we know there were procedural errors made. Some precincts were counted twice. Those are some of the things we were working on this week with an ES&S official.”

Don Blakely, ES&S regional sales manager, addressed the committee and reported that communication between the software company and the Williamson County Elections Administration was lacking.

Of the 145 counties for which Blakely said the company conducts elections, Williamson County was the last to send its information for ballot coding and printing and some of the information was found to be incorrect, causing further delay.

Richard Torres, county Democratic Party chairman and member of the county's election commission, addressed commission members John Doerfler, county judge, Lisa Birkman, Precinct 1 commissioner, and Greg Boatwright, Precinct 2 commissioner. Torres recommended the Commissioners Court reevaluate the set up of the Elections Administration.

“That elections office is really set up for failure, and it did,” Torres said.

Birkman submitted a memorandum requesting that the faults in the county's election processes be evaluated and recommendations for improvements be made. She mentioned concerns from her constituents including long lines a polling locations and poor training of elections officials.

Linda Martin from the county's elections office stood in place of Stacy at the meeting and Willingham, though he was not originally involved in this election, presented the commission with a precinct by precinct break down of the final ballot count and interpreted the numbers for early voting, election day voting and related variances.

“We (re)counted all of the ballots that we could clearly identify as being early voting ballots,” Willingham said.

The grand totals show that 84,795 signatures were on the voter sign in sheets across the county but 376 fewer ballots were counted in the final results. Willingham said the 0.44 percent variance between the number of ballots counted and the total signatures is not within the typical limits of variance. A positive or negative difference of 150 to 250 between the two totals is more normal, Willingham said.

He said some of the variance could be attributed to early voting and election day ballots commingling. Willingham also explained that early voting returns in the precinct by precinct totals that showed variance could have been caused by substitution ballots.

A substitution ballot has identical content to a precincts official ballot but the precinct number or code is different. If the substitution ballot is not recoded properly to count for the intended precinct, sign in sheet and ballot totals for a precinct can vary, Willingham said.

All electronic ballots and early votes were recounted with variations in the totals but none of the race outcomes changed.

“I think that - and this is my opinion - I don't think there would be any significant change in the totals no matter how you went through them,” he said.

Before the elections commissioners voted to canvass the votes Doerfler said the blame falls on the elections commission because it elects and oversees the elections administrator. He expressed concern about the county's elections processes and apologized that this incident occurred under his authority.

Birkman said as the only commissioner returning after this election she will not let the issue go without being addressed.

“We're not going to just ignore all the problems,” she said. “We need to take corrective action.”

The elections commission will meet today to assign an interim elections administrator and begin the process of permanently filling the position.

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