Computer problems delay Tarrant County primary election vote count
Tarrant County election results will be delayed several hours due to equipment failures.
Tarrant County judge Glen Whitley described the “computer problem” late Tuesday. He said the results recorded in vote scanners used for counts is typically transmitted to a machine to generate unofficial results. But, the machine is malfunctioning and not accumulating that information.
Instead, votes will be counted by bringing in the voting machines to a single location and plugging them to transmit the information to a central computer, Whitley said. This is the typical process used to generate official results.
Whitley said the county will come up with an official tally of votes, but that could take “four, five, six” hours.
Voters are going to “have to wait until we can feel comfortable that we’ve got the correct numbers,” he said.
“The integrity of the ballot is the most important thing,” he said.
Earlier Tuesday, the county reported its unofficial early voting numbers.
“Computers are great when they work, and they’re crappy when they don’t,” Whitley said, estimating it would be 5 or 6 a.m. before the results are released.
In the race for Tarrant County judge, Republican Tim O’Hare and Democrat Deborah Peoples were leading after unofficial results from early voting. O’Hare leads with 57.63% of the Republican vote, while former Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price trails with 34.88%. Byron Bradford has 2.92%, Kristen Collins has 2.52% and Robert Trevor Buker has 2.04%.
Peoples, a former chair of the Tarrant County Democratic Party, leads Democrats with 82.83% of the vote to Marvin Sutton’s 17.17% of the vote. Peoples has run for mayor in Fort Worth twice in recent years. She lost the first time to Price in 2019 and again to current Mayor Mattie Parker in 2021’s runoff election.
In the race for district attorney, Republican Phil Sorrells and Democrat Tiffany Burks had leads after early voting. Sorrells led the Republican race with 43.44% with Mollee Westfall in second place with 29.13% state Rep. Matt Krause in third with 27.43%. The top two vote-getters will head to a runoff on May 24 if no one receives more than 50% of the vote.
Burks led the Democratic race with 58.77% of the vote. Albert John Roberts is in second place with 29.93% of votes and Lawrence Meyers is in third with 11.3%.
Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair Allison Campolo was aware of the vote count delays Tuesday night.
“I am told their usual system of being able to post unofficial results is not working as expected so they will be posting only the official results as soon as possible,” she said in a text to the Star-Telegram. “While we understand it is disappointing to wait, voters should try to get some sleep and be as patient as they can. The Elections Office is working on this problem all the way through the night and we trust they will have it resolved as soon as possible.”
Tarrant County Republican Party Chair Rick Barnes said, “We always hate to see delays, but we also want to make sure the results are appropriately handled before they’re announced.”
The computer malfunction isn’t the only problem experienced at polls in Tarrant County on Tuesday. Some voting locations across the county got off to rocky starts due to lack of volunteers.
Campolo said Tuesday morning that Democrats were a little short of the 192 volunteers needed at the polls. More than 360 had signed up initially, she said, but some had dropped out, citing family emergencies and the flu.
Elections Administrator Heider Garcia told the county commissioners at their Tuesday meeting that each polling location had to have both a Republican and Democratic judge to set up equipment. He said his office had to do emergency appointments to fill some spots due to “no shows,” which caused the opening delays.
In some cases, Garcia said, they had the judge from the opposing party who was already there to set up equipment for their voters.
Democratic voters were also turned away at Fort Worth’s Southwest Sub-Courthouse at 6551 Granbury Road because voting machines were not working.
“There were some broken machines during the day, which it is my [understanding] they were fixed before the afternoon wave of voters,” Campolo said in a text Tuesday night. “Those machines being down were definitely a big impact into Democrats being able to vote in a timely manner but we appreciate the elections office correcting the issue.”
Tarrant County uses the Hart InterCivic Verity Voting System, voting machines they got in August 2019 after it was adopted as the official system for the county. When casting ballots, people vote on touch screens and a paper ballot is printed out and placed into a scanner to be counted.
Vote results were delayed in the 2020 general election because of faulty bar codes on about 17,000 to 18,000 mail-in ballots. Election workers had to recreate the ballots because they couldn’t be read by the sorting machinery.
Parker County experienced failures with its Hart InterCivic system in March 2020, according to the Weatherford Democrat.
Click here for Tarrant County Republican results
Click here for Tarrant County Democrat results
Staff Writers Abby Church, Jesse Hardin and James Hartley contributed to this report.
This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 10:49 PM.
