Land: New ballot box is from this election

Election officials Carolyn Graves, and Debra Land open the recently found ballot box 12/16/19 morning to discover ballots from the November election. Tim Fischer/Reporter-Telegram Election officials Carolyn Graves, and Debra Land open the recently found ballot box 12/16/19 morning to discover ballots from the November election. Tim Fischer/Reporter-Telegram Photo: Tim Fischer/Midland Reporter-Telegram Photo: Tim Fischer/Midland Reporter-Telegram Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Land: New ballot box is from this election 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

10:25 a.m. Christine Foreman, co-chair of We Choose Our Future – the SPAC that supports the bond -- said she and Dave Joyner will contest the election. Representatives from Better Bond for Midland announced last week that they would contest.

Foreman said SPACs cannot contest, but representatives from SPACs can contest, and that’s what they will be doing.

9:20 a.m. Land said everyone believed the ballot box that was discovered Thursday was an empty box. It wasn’t until an employee was organizing the shelves that the office realized the box was not empty.

She said she believes the error came because ballots are usually placed in blue ballot boxes, but these ballots had been placed into a metal tin. She said if the ballots had been in a blue box it would “definitely" not have been overlooked when distributing the ballot boxes to counting teams during the recount.

The Secretary of State’s Office has been providing training to the office, and Land said she expects to be ready for the January special election for City Council District 2.

“This whole thing has been one in a million,” Land said.

9:10 a.m. Keith Ingram, director of elections division for the Secretary of State’s Office, said the recount is not to be blamed for votes that were not counted. He described the mistake as “human error” — and it was the fault of the Elections Office for not providing the recount committee with those votes.

9 a.m. The counting teams agree to end the count. Because Better Bond for Midland will file to contest the election and a count will take place, they have determined there is no reason to count additional ballot boxes because 836 votes were counted. However, it has not been determined if these votes from the new ballot box make up for the discrepancy.

8:15 a.m. The ballot box discovered Thursday during a ballot count was opened Monday morning, and it was determined that the ballot box was from this most recent election, which revealed an 820-vote discrepancy between a manual paper ballot recount on Nov. 22-23 and the electronic machine tabulations that took place on Nov. 5 and Nov. 12.

With representatives of both special-purpose action committees and the Secretary of State’s Office in the room, Elections Administrator Deborah Land announced after she opened the box: “This is from this election.”

Counting teams have begun to count the ballots from this box to determine if the entire discrepancy is a result of these missing votes.

The outcome of the bond cannot be changed based solely on this finding. However, Better Bond for Midland, the SPAC opposing the bond, announced it will contest the election.