MINERAL WELLS — Election judges around the county had varying experiences. Judges for Precincts 4, 21 and 29 had a small glitch with one machine, but said the county clerk’s office came and fixed it quickly, according to one judge.
The stream was steady at Southside Church of Christ, mostly with Republicans, but election officials for both parties helped when times were busy.
Presiding election judge Karyn Wood said she has been an election judge in Midland and said the job “is the only time you get to meet all your neighbors.”
Precincts covering the locally contested Republican races – Precinct 2 Commissioner and Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace – in the northern part of the county had differing experiences with voting machines.
Things were settled at Salesville Baptist Church, where election judge Holly Lively confirmed the “machines work fine,” but the situation wasn’t the same in Graford. Early in the morning election officials realized their machines were loaded with Gordon ballots. This meant Graford’s Precinct 7 voters, totaling 568, had to vote the old-fashioned way – with paper ballots and No. 2 pencils.
After completing his ballot, Mike Franklin looked around the room and asked, “Where’s the machine?” as he seemed to look for the old scanning machines. Judges directed him to a locked wooden box in which to place his ballot.
“They didn’t work,” said County Clerk Bobbie Smith when asked about the machines.
Smith, who also serves as the county’s election administrator, said the county voting machine vendor ES&S made two Gordon tapes instead of one for Gordon and one for Graford.
“For some reason it wasn’t caught until they started voting (Tuesday) morning,” she said of the Precinct 7 snafu. “We gave them paper ballots and nobody was denied a vote, there’s no big story in this, it happens, mistakes are made.”
“We found this before the polls ever opened,” she said, adding, “most of them enjoyed voting on a paper ballot.”
Smith didn’t think it would take long to run the paper ballots through the M100 – ballot on demand – machine once election officials returned the box to the courthouse.
“It was just a mistake on their part, too,” Smith said of the vendor.
“We do a clearing and testing of all of them – the PEB and flash card – but did not catch that Precinct 7 was not there,” she explained of the county’s testing process.
“Machines are not necessarily the problem,” said Parker County Elections Administrator Robert Parten. They use a different vendor for voting machines.
He explained the detailed method they undergo with all precinct voting machines and ballots to test and verify that they are all working correctly. Vendors can make mistakes, he added, which is why he and the two party chairs verify and sign off on each sample ballot their vendor returns to them.
“Just because the vendor has done it and sent it back doesn’t necessarily mean it was programmed the way you want it,” he said.
“Before any ballot is printed or a program is put into a machine, three different sets of eyes have looked at it,” said Parten. “It’s a process in which takes a lot of detail. Very well could have been an error made by vendors, but it should have been caught through the verification process.”
Staff writer Libby Cluett can be reached at (940) 325-4465, ext. 3422, or lcluett@mineralwellsindex.com.
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