brennan center for justice

November2006ES&S:iVotronicTexasHidalgo County, TXAccording to the Dallas Morning News, electionofficials had to recount votes for U.S. House District28 manually after discovering that the device used todownload election totals from its touch-screenmachine malfunctioned.October 2006October 2006March 2006March 2004ES&S:iVotronic;M650ES&S:iVotronicHart:eSlate; eScanES&S:M315TexasTexasTexasTexas“The director of elections for the Texas Secretary ofState's office, Ann McGeehan, said votes would becounted using a printout generated by each votingmachine.” 488Bexar County, TXThe San Antonio Express News reported that thetabulation of election results was delayed for one anda half hours because the tabulation computers hadnot been programmed with updated data in order tocount “mail-in” paper ballots. The computer systemwas taken off-line and updated with the informationneeded to process the 3,000 paper ballots, whichwere then tabulated using high-speed scanners. 489Jefferson County, TXDuring early voting, voters complained that whenthey selected a particular candidate, anothercandidate’s name would light up. KDFM reportedthat the vote switching occurred with voters who hadcast a straight Democratic ticket as well as individualvotes. 490Tarrant County, TXAccording to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, aprogramming error during the Tarrant Countyprimary election caused an extra 100,000 votes to berecorded than had been cast. Initial tallies indicatedthat 158,000 people had voted when actually onlyapproximately 58,000 had voted. The problemsstemmed from a programming error created by thevendor, Hart InterCivic. The error caused thecomputer to compound vote totals each time theelection totals were updated throughout the night,rather than simply keeping a running total. 491Lubbock County, TXAccording to the Lubbock Avalanche Journal,machines failed to count votes in the race for Precinct8 Democratic chairman. The ballots had to berecounted with alternate software, provided byBrennan Center for Justice | 91