Voter delays and incorrect ballots mark the first day of early voting in Dallas County

When he arrived at the South Garland Branch Library to cast his vote on the first day of early voting Monday, Javier Olivarez was eager to hear his voice heard on 18 of the city of Dallas’ proposals.

But as he began filling in the ovals, he realized the ballot didn’t match the county where he lives. None of the suggestions appeared on his screen, he said.

Nevertheless, he worked to ensure that his vote for president was counted. And because Olivarez didn’t want to stop a group of colleagues coming to see him at the library, he decided to fill out the ballot anyway, foregoing the city’s proposals and his ability to weigh in on races in his congressional and Texas House districts to vote.

And it hurt.

“As a brown, gay person, these voices impact my life and the lives of my friends,” said Olivarez, secretary of the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas. “That was really important to me. I take voting very seriously, but it was more about my team being able to vote.”

A software problem caused delays in Dallas County’s electronic check-in system on the first day of early voting Monday, leading to lines of up to two hours at some locations as machines had to be restarted. This also resulted in some voters receiving ballots for counties where they do not live. Although many errors were caught immediately and poll workers were allowed to issue corrected ballots, an unknown number of voters filled out and cast ballots that were not related to their precinct, confirmed Heider Garcia, Dallas County election administrator.

Races for president and county offices were not affected because they apply broadly to county voters, but Garcia said the error caused some voters to cast ballots without local races or propositions in which they could have participated. In other cases, residents may have cast votes in local elections where they should not have voted, he said.

Garcia said he won’t know the exact number of miscast ballots until after the Nov. 5 election because the ballots are currently in locked boxes at polling stations. He said those votes will be counted because there is no way to retrieve them, but the number of ballots cast in incorrect precincts will be determined in a post-election audit.

“I’m not sugarcoating things: This should never have happened,” Garcia said.

While the issue confused many polling places Monday, Garcia said it should not cause residents to lose confidence in the integrity of the process. The flaw, which was fixed Monday through a configuration update by the voting system and software maker, was limited to the check-in machines or poll books and had nothing to do with scanning ballots or tabulating votes, he said.

“It has nothing to do with the accuracy of the vote count,” Garcia said.

In response to emailed questions from The Dallas Morning NewsES&S spokeswoman Katina Granger said there have been “sporadic reports” of check-in software issues occurring in other jurisdictions across the U.S. during early voting. She did not name the number of counties where the problems are occurring.

Still, Garcia acknowledged that the issue “couldn’t have been more timely.” This follows repeated allegations from the Dallas County Republican Party of irregularities in voting machines and processes in recent weeks, even though the state has confirmed that the county’s voting system is secure.

The county conducted its first state-mandated logic and accuracy tests of tabulators and county scanners on Sept. 18, but had to repeat the test the next day because “preliminary errors” were due to human error rather than failures in the system, Garcia said.

The test was successfully completed and certified on September 19th.

In a statement two weeks later, Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West claimed that the failed Sept. 18 test showed that “illegal software and hardware” was being used in the election. But a team of officials from the Texas Secretary of State and the Texas Attorney General conducted a 13-hour inspection of Dallas County’s voting systems on Oct. 8 and concluded in a seven-page report that the county’s voting system “counted ballots correctly and …” “complies with applicable certification standards” under Texas law.

According to the state’s report released Oct. 16, the state investigation found “no issues with the accuracy of the tabulation equipment or with the ballot programming the use of which is being tested” in Dallas County’s Nov. 5 general election.

In an interview Tuesday, West said check-in software delays on the first day of early voting and the unknown number of incorrectly cast ballots added to concerns he raised during the logic and accuracy review.

“If everything was fine, we shouldn’t have had a collapse … on the very first day of early voting,” West said.

Garcia confirmed that some voters who were issued incorrect ballots at University Park United Methodist Church on Preston Road were told to come back to vote another day while check-in machines were restarted.

He said voters shouldn’t have been told to leave, but he believes the error was limited to that voting center and poll workers were advised there.

Kardal Coleman, chairman of the Dallas County Democratic Party, said that while it is “unacceptable” that some voters receive or cast ballots for the wrong precinct, it does not equate to problems with election security.

He said the check-in software issue, fixed Monday, was “a separate issue” than the accuracy of the voting machines.

“Chairman West is trying to push a broader narrative that none of this is safe, and that’s not right,” Coleman said. “This is not the time to launch some kind of witch hunt or election conspiracy. That’s not the case here.”

Sixty-seven counties in Texas use ES&S software, but Secretary of State spokeswoman Alicia Phillips Pierce could not say Wednesday whether any county other than Dallas County has experienced the same problems with their voter control electronic poll books.

“We are reaching out to everyone to see if they have any issues,” she said in an email.

On Monday, the electronic poll books displayed black screens and error messages, causing poll workers to have to restart the machines to continue checking in voters, Garcia said in a statement Tuesday. This led to voters standing in line for up to two hours in some places. The problem also included printing incorrect ballots for some voters, but Garcia said poll workers and voters were able to catch many of those errors.

Citing a statement from the ES&S manufacturer, Garcia said the problem began when poll books failed to show a message that the machines were processing information entered by poll workers.

Poll workers’ repeated touching of the devices then caused black screens, error messages and the need to reboot, the statement said.

The issue was resolved with a configuration update that, according to Garcia’s statement, “allows the survey books to be successfully displayed to the survey operator as the devices process information.”

Garcia said the problem was with the manufacturer and could not be tested during last month’s logic and accuracy tests.

Christopher Mann, research director at the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit, said despite persistent allegations of fraud in recent elections across the country, voting in the U.S. is proven to be safe and accurate. He said that isolated problems could arise, but they did not equate to problems in elections.

State and federal courts have dismissed dozens of lawsuits from former President Donald Trump and his allies challenging his defeat in the 2020 election. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency also reported that in the November 2020 election, “there was no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was compromised in any way,” The Associated Press reported.

Mann said Dallas County’s ability to resolve issues with check-in equipment on the first day of early voting was an example of “the system working.”

He said: “2024 will be the safest, most transparent and most verified election in American history, but it will not be perfect, and Dallas County will, as far as I know, be the first example in the list of possibilities.”

“But that was one day at the start of early voting, and it was caught and corrected,” he said.