Primary election outcomes challenged
By ANNA M. TINSLEY
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

About half a dozen candidates in both parties have requested free recounts of primary election votes, ? but state and local officials say the politicians will first have to plunk down deposits of as much as $4,500 for the do-over.

This comes despite promises last week that free recounts would be available in Tarrant County, where a computer programming error counted some votes multiple times and boosted the final tally in both primaries by as much as 100,000 votes.

?The secretary of state?s office ... told me the recount procedures are very clear in that you do charge for them and there would be legal issues in not charging,? said Gayle Hamilton, Tarrant County?s interim elections administrator. ?I notified both parties that I was told I could not offer the free recount, as much as I wanted to.

?We need to follow the proper procedures, and there?s nothing there to allow me to do that.?

This leaves in limbo about half a dozen requests for free recounts, ranging from Doreen Geiger, who lost a bid for Democratic Party chair by about 1,600 votes, to State District Judge Frank Sullivan, who lost a re-election bid by 569 votes, according to county election officials.

No candidates have come forward with a recount request they are willing to pay for, officials said.

Democrats are scheduled to formally canvass their results Thursday, Republicans on Friday. A deadline to request a recount ? and pay for it ? looms on Monday, party officials said.

Democratic Party Chairman Art Brender said he has forwarded the free recount requests from party members to the secretary of state?s office to see if there are any options.

But he said he believes the current results are probably accurate.

?Certainly it?s frustrating they didn?t have the system working as it should have on election night,? Brender said. ?They appear to have corrected the problems. We?ve got all the precinct-by-precinct returns which we posted on our Web site.

?We haven?t had anybody saying there is anything different from what was reported,? he said. ?I?m assuming there?s no other problems.?

Brender maintains that there is a need for a paper trail in the next election. He and others hope that by the May elections a device will be added to the electronic eSlate machines used in early voting to record paper copies of ballots cast. The Texas secretary of state?s office must first give its approval.

Republican Party Chairwoman Stephanie Klick said she has a team of volunteers auditing the recording tape that was in the voting machines, comparing that data to precinct-by-precinct reports.

?It?s a good idea to try to verify some things,? she said. ?That?s what we?re trying to do with the audit.?

Hart InterCivic, the company that made the county?s equipment and wrote the software, last week took responsibility for the error, and its officials said they would work with local officials to keep any future problems to a minimum.

Company President Britt Kauffman said in a statement this week that a procedural error led to inflated counts when merging vote totals from early voting, absentee-by-mail voting and election-day voting into one report on election night.

?Hart InterCivic will work as needed with Tarrant County to provide refresher trainings, written checklists, duplicate spot checks and comparisons against the tabulation totals from each type of voting when producing a consolidated report,? Kauffman?s statement said. ?Had this been done on election night, the overreporting issue instantly would have been noticed and corrected before publicly releasing the report.?

Officials in the secretary of state?s office say they will work with Tarrant County elections officials and Hart InterCivic to make sure no similar problems crop up in the April 11 runoff election.

?Obviously we?re going to continue working with the county and vendors on training and to make sure the vendor gets what it needs to make this system as efficient and effective as possible,? said Scott Haywood, a spokesman for the secretary of state?s office. ?This election was the first time 254 counties in Texas had to have electronic voting systems in place.

?To have a handful of problems isn?t bad,? he said. ?We will continue to work to improve the system.?

As for Geiger, she said she?s disappointed she won?t get the free recount she requested only because of the voting irregularities announced last week.

?I?m not a sore loser,? she said. ?I knew when I went in that I might win and I might lose. When I went to bed [election night], I felt fine ? until I got the phone call about the press conference? about the computer glitch.

?I do not have the money to pay for a countywide recount,? she said. ?I feel the Tarrant County elections administrator and secretary of state let down the voters in Tarrant County.?

Hamilton said her office ran new cumulative reports that previously had been run every hour and the totals turned out to be correct.

She said that even if a candidate agrees to pay for a recount, the county is only allowed to look at the results for that race, whether it is countywide or a single precinct.

And she said she is confident that election night numbers are now accurate.

?With all of our checks and procedures in proofing, it looks like everything is fine and verified,? Hamilton said.

But she said she and her staff will take additional steps to make sure the April 11 runoff numbers are accurate.

?We?re going to make sure we follow procedures, and regardless as to how much pressure we?re getting to get the results out there, we?re going to verify it first before giving it to the media,? Hamilton said. ?If we had verified what we were doing before we put it out to the media [March 7], this wouldn?t have happened.?