Error forces Tarrant County (TX) to fix thousands of mailed ballots
County Judge Glen Whitley said the problem — a printing error with bar codes on about one-third of mailed-in ballots — was discovered over the weekend, leading to a hastily devised solution that was worked out Monday by the county Election Board and presented Tuesday to county commissioners.
Every ballot that can’t be scanned will be taken to a voting machine and duplicated onto the appropriate precinct’s ballot by a county employee, volunteer or member of the Election Board, Whitley said.
The duplicate ballot and the original will be presented to a two-person team, one Republican and one Democrat, to verify that all the selections are identical. The original will be locked away and preserved, while the duplicate will be added to the pile of early votes to be counted before 7 p.m. on Election Day, Whitley said.
“Our first priority is to maintain the integrity of the ballot,” he said, adding that completing the count of all early votes by 7 p.m. on Election Day is the secondary goal.
Elections Administrator Heider Garcia told county commissioners that the process is the same as outlined in state law for fixing damaged ballots.
Whitley said he was “very confident” that the problem will not delay the vote count. “Everyone said they will work extra hours,” he said.
The problem appears to have been the state-authorized vendor’s use of an ink-jet printer on some ballots that was not as precise as required, he said.
About one-third of ballots scanned in a Saturday test were rejected by the machine. With about 85,000 mail-in ballots sent out, and around 62,000 returned thus far, “they speculated that it could be as many as 20,000 to 25,000 ballots that can’t be scanned,” Whitley said.
https://www.statesman.com/news/20201027/error-forces-tarrant-county-to-fix-thousands-of-mailed-ballots
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