10000 Ballots?

I guess the first question is: How does an elections office miss 10,000 ballots?

KHOU reports

“The oversight occurred between the hours of 1 and 4 a.m. as the political parties that make up the Central Count Committee were reviewing ballots,” Longoria’s office said in a press release.

They said the votes were scanned into the tabulation machines but not transferred, which meant they were not being counted in the unofficial count on Election Night. The votes are set to be added to the final count when the Central Count Committee next meets on Tuesday, according to the elections administrator’s office.

The good news is that the elections folks at the Secretary of State’s office caught the error when the reconciliation forms did not match between votes tabulated and the number of actual votes. So, it’s not like the votes were “lost” or “missing.” They just didn’t get tabulated once entered into the system. But the question remains: How was this not checked at Harris County before anyone clicked [SEND} to the Secretary of State’s office?

While the buck stops with whomever is in charge of the elections office, there needs to be a full accounting as to procedures and employee actions occurring throughout the vote count. Staff involved in this should also be held accountable in one way or another. No doubt, republican whining didn’t help, but the focus should always stay with the vote count.

From a political sense, I’m pretty sure there is no turning back from this. The Republicans whined enough that something simple, yet so major, will stick when calling for resignations, now. In other words, the elected officials who created the office and hired the election administrator will need to decide which direction to go. And in an election year. With two elections happening soon and a major one in November. It’s not really a good time for upheaval in the elections office.