Texas counties and related voting problems during 2006 primary

http://info.sos.state.tx.us/pls/pub/pubomquery$omquery.queryview?P_OM_ID=82361&Z_CHK=2121
Agency Name: Office of the Secretary of State
Date of Meeting: 03/23/2006
Time of Meeting: 09:00 AM (Local Time)
Status: Active
Street Location: 208 E. 10th Street, Jefferson Rusk Building, 2nd Floor Conference Room
City Location: Austin
Meeting State: TX
TRD ID: 2006001976
Submit Date: 03/03/2006
Emergency Meeting?: No
Additional Information Obtained From: Katie Morrissey or Irene Diaz, 512-463-5650 or 1-800-252-8683
Agenda: VOTING SYSTEM PUBLIC FORUM
March 23, 2006

Public Hearing to provide interested persons an opportunity to express their views for or against the approval of the Diebold Voting System GEMS 1-18-24 examined on January 19, 2006.

Examiners reports may be viewed at:
http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/laws/jan2006_diebold.shtml

An electronic voting machine was stolen from the home of a Dallas County elections judge over the weekend.

iVotronic voting machine
Sgt. Don Peritz, a Dallas County Sheriff spokesman, said the judge notified sheriff's dispatchers Sunday afternoon that the iVotronic touch-screen machine was stolen from his home in the 200 block of East 5th Street.

Dallas County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet said the machine will not function without an additional piece of hardware called a personalized electronic ballot, or PEB.

Mr. Sherbet said his employees identified the serial number of the stolen machine and have blocked it from any access to the elections system, reducing the risk of vote fraud.
more...
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/030706dnmetvotingmachine.8f10b1af.html

San Angelo Standard-Times article

Officials work on ballot puzzle
Machine used for early voting, Election Day could be at fault

March 23, 2006

A misplaced machine could be the cause of difficulties with Tom Green County's suspended recount of votes in the March 7 primary election, recount officials said Wednesday.

Although initially blamed on a malfunction of computerized voting machines, a possible thousand-vote discrepancy could have been caused when election workers mistakenly allowed a computer used for early voting to be used again on Election Day, county Republican Party Chairman Dennis McKerley said.

As a result, he said, the early votes in the machine were tabulated correctly on Election Day. However, they were not printed for the subsequent hand recount because workers believed the machine contained only Election Day votes.

Election and recount officials said they won't know how many early votes the machine contains until the recount is restarted.

"This machine may make up for all of them or some of them," McKerley said, referring to the gap - believed to be as large as 1,400 votes - between the certified and recounted totals. "We don't know."

San Angelo Standard-Times article
March 27, 2006

Recount in favor of Roberts
With ballots counted, recounted, reprinted and counted again, the Tom Green County Republican Party certified the results Sunday night after two tumultuous weeks that featured a myriad of problems - all of which appear to have been caused by human error.

Hughes, the leading vote-getter, received 3,529 votes, six fewer than the number certified in the original tally March 11. Roberts' vote total increased by 10 to 3,043. Edwards finished with 3,028, seven more than originally counted.

The 9,600 total votes are 11 more than were originally certified.

Beaumont Enterprise article
03/27/2006

Voting machine issues heat up
BEAUMONT - Problems with the provider of Jefferson County's electronic voting machines could lead to paper ballots and a manual count for the April 11 runoff, in violation of federal law.

Election Systems & Software, the Nebraska-based company that provided the county's machines, has refused to program equipment for the runoff until the county pays the $1.95 million bill.

The county has refused to pay before resolving problems that plagued the March 7 primary and culminated in a full recount of Election Day ballots after some votes were counted twice.

County Clerk Carolyn Guidry has listed 10 specific deficiencies, including ill-informed ES&S personnel, equipment failures and inadequate training.

After a closed session Monday, Commissioners Court voted to contact ES&S immediately to demand action by the company to correct problems. The court also decided to have Guidry investigate ways to conduct the runoff without using ES&S equipment and authorized the District Attorney's office to "take any appropriate action" against ES&S.

Early voting for the April 11 runoff starts Monday. Ballots in some form will include one statewide judicial race for Republicans. Democrats will decide statewide races for U.S. senator and lieutenant governor and a county-wide race for Criminal District Court judge.