While there’s always heavy scrutiny around Harris County elections, it was neighboring Fort Bend County that, earlier this year, had to fess up to a human error that caused all 76 vote centers to pause operations for more than two hours.
During the May 26 primary runoff, poll workers began reporting around 2:30 p.m. that they were unable to check in voters. Elections administrator Chase Wilson, who at the time had been on the job for less than six months, said the glitch was caused by a clerical error in his 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,” Wilson said at the time. “Unfortunately, when this upload was completed, the incorrect file was chosen and uploaded into the system.”
The file that corrupted the system 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,” so voters’ names weren’t showing up in the system when they arrived to vote. Election officials said the employee who uploaded the wrong file didn’t do so intentionally.
But voters complained of long lines and having to use provisional ballots that they weren’t sure would be counted. Many got frustrated and left when the glitch occurred. Although there were some attempts to extend voting hours past 7 p.m., that ultimately didn’t happen.
Wilson told the Houston Press in an email this week that he’s confident such an error won’t occur again.
“Our vendor developed a safeguard that prevents an incorrect file from being loaded into the pollbook,” he said in an email. “This will eliminate the risk of repeating the mistake from the primary runoff. Further, we have adjusted our internal processes and require senior administration oversight of any pollbook updates.”
Wilson acknowledged there have been some other challenges, such as manually updating the registration rolls after last year’s countywide redistricting effort and receiving thousands of backlogged registration applications from the Department of Public Safety two weeks before the registration deadline this year.
He said, however, that the records are now updated and he and his team are ready for early voting, which starts Monday, October 19, and continues through October 30. Election Day is November 3.
Apparently, Fort Bend County residents have short memories or forgiving hearts, as a majority of respondents in a recent Texas Southern University poll said they are optimistic that the election will operate smoothly, at least locally.
According to the survey, 81 percent of Fort Bend County voters are confident that election officials will count votes accurately. Eighty percent said they believed voting machines and election systems are secure. Seventy-nine percent said they were confident all eligible voters would be able to cast a ballot, and 76 percent believed the workers could prevent people who are not eligible to vote from voting.
An overwhelming majority (80 percent) of the 1,200 Fort Bend County registered voters who were surveyed had confidence in the county elections system, whereas 65 percent were confident in the state’s ability to run an election and 45 percent were confident in the nation’s ability.
Rice University political science professor Mark Jones said it was interesting that “Fort Bend County residents, whether they’re Democrat or Republican, have a lot of faith and confidence in Fort Bend election officials.”
“They had the little kerfuffle in the primary, but by and large, an overwhelming majority of Fort Bend County residents are confident that everything is going to go well with elections in Fort Bend County,” Jones said. “They’re not nearly as confident with what’s going to happen outside of Fort Bend County in Texas and outside of Texas in the United States.”
Fort Bend County also had problems in 2020, when 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.
Wilson said this week he’s pleased to hear that the community is confident in his ability to run elections. “We do everything we can to ensure our elections are secure, efficient, and true. We do our best to answer every concern and take every effort to inform our community,” he said.
This week, they’re testing equipment and reviewing the registration rolls to ensure accuracy, Wilson said. His office is in charge of distributing and processing mail-in ballots, which must be postmarked by October 23.
But like most other jurisdictions in Texas, Fort Bend County has heard its share of concerns lately. Last month, the Secretary of State’s Office announced that 1.2 million Texans were on the “voter suspense list.”
The list has been around since 1995 and although its name suggests that a person is “suspended,” that’s not the case. Voters on the list can still cast ballots; they just need to fill out a Statement of Residence form to confirm that their address is current.
Wilson said he got some calls about suspense status prior to updating the registration rolls delayed by the DPS backlog, but the calls subsided once that the delayed information from the state was added to the Fort Bend County system. He said it’s possible that some people will show up to the polls who haven’t voted in the last two federal elections and therefore have been dropped from the registration rolls.
“We do sometimes get voters who say they registered, but we don’t show an active record for them,” he said. “This is very rare, though. In this event, we would offer a provisional ballot and review their status with the Secretary of State, but I do not expect an increase in volume.”
His office has also heard concerns, as have Harris County election officials, that federal agents could be stationed at the polls to intimidate voters. “We’ve received a lot of inquiries about ICE’s potential presence,” Wilson said. “We are coordinating with local law enforcement to ensure everything runs smoothly at the polls.”
Violations of the law, such as an ICE agent being inside a polling location or within 100 feet of a polling place, will be reported to local authorities, as will any allegations of voter fraud, Wilson said.
The Fort Bend County Elections website shows a map of all 38 early voting locations and will display estimated waiting periods in real time. Voters can also use the site to check their voter registration status.
