Fort Bend County officials have downplayed a technical error that caused all 76 Fort Bend County vote centers to temporarily stall on Tuesday, maintaining that people were still able to cast ballots in primary runoffs and the integrity of the election was not compromised.
Elections Administrator Chase Wilson, who was appointed to the position late last year and took office on January 1, told reporters on Tuesday that a “bad file” was uploaded into the voter check-in system and the glitch could be attributed to human error. During the temporary shutdown, voters were allowed to cast provisional ballots, although many were deterred by the long lines and left polling centers without voting.
The outage occurred around 2:30 p.m. and service was restored around 5 p.m. with about two hours to go before the polls closed. While some public officials referred to the system glitch as a problem with voting machines, Wilson clarified that the problem occurred with the check-in software. He said checks and balances are in place, but some data is uploaded manually and “unfortunately this appears to be an oversight.”
“Roughly at about 2:30 p.m., we received reports that voters were unable to check in at polling locations,” he said. “We quickly identified the issue and it appears to have stemmed from a clerical user error in our office. The standard procedure for updating our poll books at the polling locations is to export a file that gets remotely transmitted to the locations. Unfortunately when this upload was completed, the incorrect file was chosen and uploaded into the system.”
The uploaded file was from a May 2 city council and school board election and it caused almost every poll book in the county to become “non-functional,” Wilson said. A vendor offered a solution and worked quickly to resolve the matter, Wilson said, clarifying that the vendor didn’t cause the problem. He declined to comment on personnel matters but said the upload came from a person in his office. In response to a question from a reporter, he said he did not believe the error was intentional or criminal.
Wilson said the system glitch didn’t affect everyone who was in line to vote after 2:30 p.m. It was unclear how many people were turned away and told to come back later and how many provisional ballots were actually cast. “If anybody was unable to vote through the normal process and was offered a provisional, I can’t see any circumstance why those provisionals would be refused,” he said, noting that his office has a five-day period to certify them.
“The accuracy of the vote is not in question here,” Wilson said. “This did provide a delay in the voting experience. I understand that voters were upset. My heart goes out to them. They showed up at the polling location and did everything they were supposed to do and got told they couldn’t check in and they left.”
Wilson’s comments are from a press conference held at 6 p.m. Tuesday, at which time he encouraged voters who had not been able to cast ballots earlier in the day to return to the polls. Wilson did not respond to several requests for an interview on Wednesday.
Interim Fort Bend County Judge Daniel Wong called the press conference Tuesday evening saying he would investigate the matter and ensure that it doesn’t happen again in the next election cycle. Wong, a Republican who’s on the ballot in November, said the county GOP agreed to extend voting hours but Democratic Party officials did not and a consensus from both party chairs was needed to proceed with keeping the polls open late. “I would have welcomed an extension for those voters. The law required mutual agreement, and it was not given,” Wong said.
GOP Party Chair Greg Barnes said at Wong’s press conference that he supported extending voting hours. “The public is already very skeptical of our voting system,” he said. “Today’s software update failure that took down the voter check-in system has only increased those concerns. Under Texas law, both parties must agree to jointly go before a judge in order to extend voting hours. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party chair would not agree to go forward with extending voting hours.”
Fort Bend County Democratic Party Chair Jennifer Cantu said the situation was “misrepresented” by Fort Bend County GOP officials. She posted a screenshot of an email from Republican attorney Larry McDougal that says, “I just got off the phone with the party chair. We agree not to pursue the TRO to extend the hours.”
“The Republican chair’s claim of an agreement to extend voting hours is misleading,” Cantu said in a statement. “Both the Democratic and Republican legal counsels agreed not to make a request for an extension.The election code is clear: 7 p.m. is the definitive cutoff for voting, and the Texas Supreme Court has consistently held that ballots cast after this time are invalid. This legal precedent has never been contested. The facts stand firm: the deadline is 7 p.m, and any assertions to the contrary are incorrect. The GOP has a pattern of misrepresentation, and this situation is no different.”
Fort Bend County has had election issues in the past. During an early voting period in 2020, the elections office was criticized for system outages and delays at polling places, prompting accusations of voter suppression.
At the time, then-Elections Administrator John Oldham said the issues occurred due to “a human error where someone placed the wrong early voting date into electronic poll books.” Fort Bend County voters reported polling machines being out of service for hours, prompting long lines.
The county also has had problems in compliance with the Voting Rights Act, although those matters were resolved years ago. In 2009, Fort Bend County reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice to improve assistance for Spanish-speaking Latino voters.
Wilson was appointed to his position by the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court after the previous elections administrator, Oldham, retired late last year after serving in the role for 17 years. At the time of Wilson’s appointment, former County Judge KP George was in office. He has since been removed following a felony conviction for money laundering. Wong was appointed as interim in April, creating controversy among Democrats who say an unfair advantage was given to the GOP because Wong will now be the incumbent in November even though he wasn’t elected to the role.
On Tuesday evening, Dexter McCoy won the Democratic Party nomination in a runoff and will face Wong in November. In the midst of the chaos Tuesday afternoon, McCoy and Christian Menefee, a candidate for U.S. Congressional District 18, acknowledged the polling place problems and encouraged voters to stay in line and file provisional ballots. Menefee also won his runoff against longtime Congressman Al Green.
