Voting system glitches buttress call for review

Shilonda R. Williams of northwest Houston cast a ballot in the November election. But it was unclear Thursday whether her votes counted or even whether they should have been included in the final tally.

Williams' ballot is among hundreds, if not thousands, of ballots that Democratic judicial candidate Goodwille Pierre is eyeing as he pursues a court challenge to his loss — by 230 votes out of 1.1 million cast — to Republican incumbent Joseph "Tad" Halbach.

Pierre's lawyer, Nile Copeland, said newly discovered glitches in the voting system mean the true outcome of the state district judge race is so cloudy that it merits a review — and that not all legitimate votes in the county were counted.

Halbach's lawyer, Andy Taylor, said Pierre's case is doomed because it would be virtually impossible to prove he was the rightful winner or that significant errors in the handling of ballots warrant a new election.

The Harris County Clerk's Office sent Williams a letter after the November election saying her ballot had been disqualified because there was no record of her voter registration.

But the bipartisan Early Ballot Board, formed to make final decisions on whether thousands of questioned ballots should have been counted, never got to deliver a verdict on whether Williams was missing from the registration list. The clerk's office withheld Williams' ballot from the referees because election workers apparently lost track of the electronic record of the choices she had marked on a voting machine.

Because there was no way to retrieve a record of her votes, it was uncertain Thursday whether her votes were rejected prematurely — or counted when they should not have been.

The ballot board, chaired by Republican retired business executive Jim Harding, rejected more than 5,000 ballots cast by people who were allowed to vote on the condition that questions about their registration status would have to be resolved weeks later. Each of those voters had to fill out a "provisional ballot affidavit," swearing he or she was qualified to vote, before getting to touch a voting machine.

But more than 200 affidavits never made it through the system because there was no record of cast votes to go with them.

In some cases, people completed the affidavit without subsequently voting, according to ballot records. In others, election judges mistakenly gave provisional voters a code that allowed their votes to be recorded permanently, with no way for county workers or the ballot board to decide whether the votes should have been counted.

"My mistake — went through as a regular vote," an election judge in northwest Houston wrote on a woman's ballot.

But in Williams' case and others, there was no ready explanation for why the clerk's office said it never received a ballot along with the affidavit.

"I think they should have counted everybody's vote," said Williams, 36, who remained convinced Thursday that she had properly registered and was entitled to vote. "I need to make sure I'm registered next time and not wait to the last minute."

Harding, chairman of the bipartisan board, said County Clerk Beverly Kaufman's office should have forwarded every affidavit anyway so the citizen members could record the fact that some votes apparently were lost.

"If there's one system in this democracy that you want to work, it's the voting system," he said.

But Kaufman's spokesman, Hector de Leon, said the agency was supposed to forward ballots — and that it made no sense to send along affidavits from voters without ballots.

County records indicate other kinds of apparent flaws in the rejection of the 5,000 or so ballots.

The ballot board rejected a smattering of ballots because they were cast in the wrong precinct, according to the records. But many were marked by voters during the early voting period, when anyone registered in the county could vote anywhere in the county. Only on Election Day were votes required to vote in the correct location for their precinct.

"They should have been included," Harding said.

Pierre's lawsuit has been assigned to state District Judge Cara Wood of Montgomery County. No hearing date has been scheduled.

alan.bernstein@chron.com