Computer issue delays Tarrant County election results again, this time for runoff
Runoff election results in Tarrant County have been delayed because officials did not test new software that was installed after the machines malfunctioned in March.
As of 10:30: p.m., only 67 of 152 vote centers had reported results. Heider Garcia, the county’s elections administrator, said officials did not have time to test the software fix, so they were tallying the results the same way they did in March.
In the March primary, results were delayed because of an issue with a machine in a tabulation room used for unofficial results. Every voting machine has two USB drives that store identical copies of results, Garcia told the Star-Telegram in March. The results from one of the drives are fed to a machine via the internet to a server. This allows the public to get quicker unofficial results on election night.
However, in March the computer that receives the unofficial results malfunctioned. So, the county decided to speed up the official results by transmitting them manually from the second USB drive.
This is what the officials decided to do on Tuesday. Municipal elections in early May ran the same way as will the municipal in June, Garcia said.
This story was originally published May 24, 2022 at 10:33 PM.
