> Dallas elections official discusses long lines, glitches, wrong ballots on first day of early voting
Dallas elections official discusses long lines, glitches, wrong ballots on first day of early voting
Clip ID 2396474
Clearance
Add to
Share
Add to Review Link
By Request
By Request assets are not available for immediate purchase.
This content has not been pre-checked for copyright.
Per clip rates are for 20 seconds of final usage. If you are using more then 20 seconds or need a different file format or have questions about clearances contact us
Description
Day one was not perfect, and on day two of early voting, the Dallas County Elections Administrator said he’s sorry.
“A big apology. Obviously, yesterday was not our finest day,” Heider Garcia told WFAA.
Voters at some locations in Dallas County reported waiting in line for more than two hours on Monday. The issue, Garcia confirmed, was a problem with the digital books used to check in voters.
As WFAA reported Monday, the software in the electronic sign-in system was randomly glitching, which forced poll workers to constantly reboot the system. Because those reboots took time, lines kept growing.
The glitches, which Garcia said happened county-wide, also caused some voters to get ballots that didn’t match their precinct.
“No matter where you live in Dallas County, you're going to have the presidential race. You're going to have the sheriff’s race. Those are county-wide races,” Garcia said.
But issues like school bonds or city propositions might not have shown up on every ballot they should have. Garcia says that was the issue in Sunnyvale, where some voters told a city councilman a school bond was not on their ballot. If a voter or poll worker recognized the error, the ballot was thrown out and a new one issued. Election workers call that process “spoiling” the ballot.
“A spoiled ballot is actually a good thing because it means the poll worker or the voter realized, this doesn’t match my registration. So, they spoil the ballot and they give them a new one,” Garcia said “We don’t know how many they missed. That’s the real question.”
FULL STORY: https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/politics/elections/dallas-co-elections-administrator-apologizes-day-one-early-voting/287-c84e5c95-8e18-4393-9dc2-a00f327b2c36