The Hill County Elections Commission met in a special session Monday afternoon, March 4, to discuss an issue with uncontested party chairs not being listed on initial ballots distributed to voters of both primaries.
Ballots provided to voters at the beginning of early voting and for those voting by mail did not include the names of Hill County Republican Party Chair Will Orr or Democratic Party Chair Thom Hanson. While neither had a challenger, those voters did not have the option to cast a vote in favor of their party chair.
The issue was corrected by the third day of early voting, according to information presented at Monday’s meeting, and Elections Administrator Aaron Torres contacted Senior Staff Attorney Chuck Pinney with the Texas Secretary of State’s Election Division and the county’s election machine vendor, Hart Intercivic.
In order to use the corrected ballots, Hart Intercivic had to technically create a new election in the system. This meant that the incorrect ballots not containing the party chairs’ names could not be directly scanned in and had to be duplicated and entered into the “new” election. That process was being conducted on the meeting date.
Ballot duplication is a common process when a ballot is damaged and partially invalid. Members of the county Ballot Board, which includes pre-appointed members of both the Republican and Democratic parties, are involved in the process.
According to information about the process that was presented at the meeting, all affected ballots were being separated by party and precinct and then counted to ensure the appropriate amount of new ballots were printed. After printing, the new, blank ballots were provided to the Ballot Board.
The board then duplicated the affected ballots onto the blank ballots, and they were reviewed by each member of the Ballot Board. Each member initialed the reviewed ballot, verifying that it was duplicated correctly, and Elections Administrator Aaron Torres also inspected them for accuracy.
The duplicated ballots were labeled “duplicate” and include the same serial number of the original ballot. These duplicated ballots were then scanned into the Hart Verity scanner, to be tabulated on Election Day when all other votes were tabulated.
Members of the Ballot Board signed affidavits stating that they would not tabulate the votes; they would just prepare them for tabulation.
The original ballots and duplicated ballots were stapled together to be permanently retained in the Hill County Elections Administration Office.
County Judge Justin Lewis said that while no contested races are impacted, the commission needed to meet to publicly discuss the issue in the interest of transparency. “We want to be very clear about why this had to happen,” he said. “I have full faith in the party chairs and the people they’ve appointed to do this job,” he said of the Ballot Board members. “These are people who have done this before, they are good citizens, they’re voting citizens of our county and they’ve been selected by their chairs. I have full faith that they are doing the job they need to do.”
Democratic Party Chair Thom Hanson said that he took responsibility for his party’s ballot being incorrect. “A proof was sent to me and I approved it, so on my end, that’s on me,” he said.
Republican Party Chair Will Orr said that his concern was for the candidates in contested races, although he said that he was not opposed to the process of correcting incorrect ballots. “I would have preferred that this process started after the meeting of the Elections Commission where we could have discussed and deliberated the where, when, how and who was going to perform this process,” Orr clarified in a follow-up email.
Lewis explained that the Elections Commission only has the authority to hire and fire an elections administrator and cannot direct their activities.
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