Officials from the Dallas County Elections Department (DCED) delivered a presentation to the Dallas County Commissioners Court on Tuesday, December 6, explaining alleged voter fraud witnessed in the November 8 midterm election.
Workers at voting precincts noticed that tabulated numbers exceeded initial counts and suspected possible error or fraud.
Multiple witnesses also claimed to have seen “voting tabulators” and “poll books” malfunctioning for hours, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
A vote tabulator is an electronic machine used to count and tabulate votes. Voting tabulators must not be able to connect to the internet to protect themselves against hacking.
A poll book is a device used at polling locations to check voter registration during the check-in process. Unlike voting tabulators, poll books, which are certified by the secretary of state, can connect to the internet to ensure a person does not vote twice.
A total of 3,909 voting machines, 2,183 poll books, and 515 vote tabulators were deployed in the general election across precincts.
The report, delivered at the December 6 meeting, explained how the irregularities witnessed by workers could be understood.
The apparent jumps in poll numbers were attributed to the slow download of voter history throughout the day, with things only speeding up after voting locations had closed. The issue was described as a “perception issue, not [a] substantive issue.”
“That downloading process was very slow all day, and then, after 7:00 p.m., when the traffic was less, all those machines were catching up,” said Elections Administrator Michael Scarpello. “So, it looked like people were checking out ballots after 7 p.m. when, in fact, the machines were just catching up,” he continued.
Scarpello then claimed that DCED received a written response from Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the company that provided the voting system, acknowledging an error with servers and assuring that it is moving to resolve the issue.
Known issues with the devices were tracked throughout the day.
Less than 1% of the 2,183 poll books experienced errors caused by DCED preparedness, while 1.6% experienced errors caused by the fault of users, and 6.1% had errors caused by technical issues.
Issues for voting machines were similarly evaluated. Of the 3,909 machines deployed, 1% experienced issues with user error, 2% had issues caused by DCED preparedness, and 2.8% experienced technical issues.
There were also issues with voting tabulators, with preparedness problems affecting 4.6%, technical issues in 6.4%, and user error problems in 10.3% of the 515 tabulators.
Dr. Theresa Daniel, a commissioner on the Dallas County Commissioners Court, said that she was receptive to ES&S’s admission of a server error but still expressed doubt about the company’s findings. “Those are some of the items that I understand, from your viewpoint, it’s a perception issue. From what we see and from voters, it was unscheduled voting or something along those lines,” said Daniel.
Commissioner John Wiley Price expressed doubt in the report, noting that issues at this scale are new, whereas the voting process is not. “Vote centers are not new. We’ve had them, and we have not had these issues,” said Price.
Officials said that going forward into the 2023 election, staff at voting sites will receive more training on technical systems.
The DCED will work with ES&S to upgrade and improve ballot tabulation infrastructure as well as train staff on ballot design and programming.
The Commissioners Court did not certify the midterm election results at this meeting.