TAD investigation finds no malicious intent behind 2024 election error
An investigation into the Tarrant Appraisal District Board election determined no malicious intent was behind the copy and paste error that led to the Tarrant County College having roughly 200 more votes than should have been allotted.
In November, Chief Appraiser Joe Don Bobbitt said he takes full responsibility for the 2024 error. No action was made on Monday to remove Bobbitt from his position.
The election canvassed the votes of taxing entities (the county, cities, school boards, etc.) to determine who would fill the five open positions on the nine-person board. As Bobbitt had just begun his work at TAD when the allocation of the 2,000 votes needed to be calculated, he delegated the task to a member of his staff.
An error made by that person gave TCC, which already has a large portion of the 2,000 total votes, more votes than the college ever had before. Officials at TCC had questioned if the allotment was for correct multiple times.
The investigation took about three weeks to complete and was conducted by TAD’s general counsel. It brought about no additional information, Chair Rick Barnes said.
“Unfortunately, it’s still an issue that happened, and there’s a lot of disgruntlement about that fact,” Barnes said. “But we’re going to try to move forward with making changes. We also think we have a changed proposal on how to do the elections moving forward that will probably fix some of that.”
Barnes said the board did not have time to get into the proposed changes on Monday but will likely present the plan at a board meeting in the new year.
The investigation came around the same time as Bobbitt’s annual review, so the board announced three areas of concern they will add to Bobbitt’s performance review. Barnes said the board discussed Bobbitt’s lack of communication with the board about the error, his failure of oversight and inadequate prioritization.
Barnes said the corrective acts he expects to see take place moving forward are: Bobbitt promptly informing the board of any serious matters affecting TAD; providing proper training resources and supervision of staff; and Bobbitt assuming 100% of the responsibility for elections.
After the investigation report was given by Barnes, board member Callie Rigney made a motion to terminate Bobbitt immediately but did not receive a second. The same thing happened at the Nov. 3 meeting.
Bobbitt said the three improvement items the board wants to see from him are achievable and fair and that he’s glad to be keeping his job.
“Our goal is still to improve TAD, improve the taxpayer experience, and so I hope to continue to be able to do that,” Bobbitt said.
This story was originally published December 1, 2025 at 3:31 PM.