Ballot problems mark 1st day of early voting
By NEIL STRASSMAN, STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
May 2, 2006

ARLINGTON - The first day of early voting did not go smoothly in Arlington.

Two City Council races were dropped from the Tarrant County ballot in areas of the city served by non-Arlington schools because of a voting machine programming oversight, county election officials said Monday.

When the polls opened, southwest Arlington voters living within the Mansfield and Kennedale school district boundaries couldn't vote in the city's District 2 council race because it was not on the ballot.

The same was true for northwest Arlington voters living within the Hurst-Euless-Bedford and Fort Worth school district boundaries trying to vote in the District 1 council race. Voters living in the Arlington school district were unaffected.

Election officials said that they would know today how many voters may have received bad ballots.

The error marks the second significant problem with Tarrant County election procedures in the last 60 days.

On Monday, there was a problem setting up the county's main election computer with the correct ballot codes, said Gayle Hamilton, Tarrant County interim elections administrator.

The error was spotted soon after the polls opened at 8 a.m. and corrected, Hamilton said.

By 9 a.m., the voters were given a second ballot with the missing races, she said.

"Because it was an electronic ballot, we were able to stop the voting until we were able to make sure they had the proper ballot," Hamilton said.

The long and complex ballot with city and school board races and county bond propositions posed difficulties because of city, school district and voting precinct boundaries, some of which overlay one another.

"It was an oversight," she said. "The ballot will be correct" today.

Electronic voting machines at 35 sites with the incorrect ballot were scheduled to be replaced overnight with machines bearing the correct ballot, Hamilton said.

"Many voters could have cast ballots and not even known that they did not vote in the District 2 election," said Councilwoman Sheri Capehart, who is running for re-election in District 2.

"It's very frustrating."

Her challenger, John Jenkins, could not be reached for comment

"It's very distressing to me that we have a problem with the election again, because we had a problem with the primary and now this," said County Commissioner Marti VanRavenswaay, who represents the southwest Arlington area where the largest number of voters faced problems.

In the March 7 primary, Tarrant County initially reported inaccurate vote totals caused by a tabulating error, counting about 100,000 that were never cast. It did not affect the outcome of races.