Tarrant County expects faster election night results after voting machine software update

A software bug that delayed Tarrant County election night results during the March primary is not expected to be a problem in November — an election with high-profile state and local races on that ballots that are likely to draw larger crowds than the earlier election.

The March results were not available until early the next morning because of a malfunction related to a machine in a tabulation room used for unofficial results on election night. The unofficial results are typically released faster than their official counterpart, allowing for candidates and voters to see who won and who lost sooner.

Tarrant County Election Administrator Heider Garcia explained at the time that each voting machine has two USB drives containing identical copies of election results. The results from one drive are sent to a machine via an internet server, allowing the public to get faster, unofficial results.. Election officials opted to transmit the official results stored in the other drive manually after the computer that receives the unofficial results malfunctioned. That procedure was repeated in May during the primary runoffs — a planned decision, Garcia said — after officials didn’t have time to test new software installed following the March malfunction.

There’s still a final test to be done before the midterm election — likely in the coming week or so — but the plan is to go back to using the original method of disseminating election results come Nov. 8, Garcia said in a Monday interview. Preliminary testing has been successful, he said.

This allows for people to get a quick view of what’s happening with results, he said.

“Right now the expectation is we should be using the unofficial tool and ... have results early up on the website,” Garcia said in a Monday. “But if we find out this week or next week that bug was imperfectly fixed, we’re uncomfortable, then we want to set the right expectation and say, Look we thought it was solved but it wasn’t. It’s going to take a long time.”

The office this week is testing various aspects of its voting equipment to make sure it is working and ballot selections properly recorded. There’s a possibility of issues arising again that delay the election night results, but “the odds of something new and different happening and causing a delay, I would say are extremely small.”

In recent weeks, election offices across the country have seen an surge of requests for 2020 voting records, according to The Washington Post. The newspaper reports the rush of inquiries began after Mike Lindell of My Pillow, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, instructed people during a Springfield, Missouri, summit to obtain “cast vote records” from each of the country’s election offices.

Tarrant County election office hasn’t been immune to the wave of requests. Dozens of requests for the cast vote records have come in over the last few weeks, Garcia said. He said he has received requests that follow a template. Responses are delayed due to a pending lawsuit, he said.

The inquiries are among hundreds of requests for voting records Garcia said the office has received in the past year. A group in Tarrant County has been reviewing thousands of records from the March 2020 Republican primary, focusing on the race between U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and his opponents, according to Votebeat Texas.

Garcia said the office’s budget included a request for a staff member dedicated to answering public records requests full time. A hybrid bookkeeper/public records position was approved by the county, he said..

Garcia doesn’t expect requests related to voting records to cause delays related to the November election.

“Priority No. 1 is the election,” he said. “So when there’s a conflict of resources, they wait. It’s very simple.”

Garcia has also testified to Congress that in the weeks after the 2020 election he received threats and had safety concerns for himself, his family and staff.

This story was originally published September 19, 2022 at 5:20 PM.