HOUSTON — Several voters have reached out to KHOU reporting that when they vote straight ticket, their selections are being changed. That includes one woman whose Twitter post had been shared more than 7,000 times and racked up more than 1.25 million impressions as of late Friday afternoon.
Leah McElrath wrote when she voted Monday at the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center near downtown Houston, she selected straight-ticket Democrat, then manually changed a few votes down ballot.
However, McElrath wrote the final summary page showed she had selected Ted Cruz for U.S. Senator, the top race on the ballot, even though she tells KHOU she had checked earlier to make sure she had selected O’Rourke’s name.
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McElrath corrected that selection, double checked that it was correct on the review page, then cast her ballot.
She shared her story after seeing a Texas Civil Rights Project tweet describing the same thing happening to other voters.
“We’ve heard of numerous cases of this statewide including in Tarrant County, Travis County and Fort Bend County, among others,” said James Slattery, senior staff attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project.
Slattery told KHOU the cases he’s aware of involve mostly Democrat straight tickets and focus on the eSlate Hart voting machine where voters use a selection wheel to move up and down the ballot, then hit enter to select.
So what’s changing the votes?
“It’s not entirely clear, but it does seem like in some cases it’s that the page downloads a little bit slower than people realize,” Slattery said. “The lag time may be causing people to select an option that they don’t actually intend to.”
The Texas Secretary of State’s Office put out an advisory to election officials Tuesday concerning the issue, saying, “This can be caused by the voter taking keyboard actions before a page has fully appeared on the eSlate, thereby de-selecting the pre-filled selection of that party’s candidate.”
“They are not changing any votes, OK?” said Stan Stanart, Harris County Clerk, during an unrelated press conference on Friday morning. “The machines are doing exactly what the voter tells them to. If you spin that dial super fast and (are) punching the buttons, it’s going to do what you tell it to. That’s why we have posters around there: ‘Review the summary screen.’”
Stanart says members of both parties oversee logic and accuracy testing on the machines.
“This technology has been stable for 15 years,” said State Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), during the same news conference. “There has never been a proven issue of a case with straight ticket voting.”
Odus Evbagharu, communications director for the Harris County Democratic Party, said McElrath’s report is the only one they’ve received on this issue so far.
Vlad Daviduik, communications director for the Harris County Republican Party, said he’s “talked with our field reps and our poll worker trainers, and we’ve not gotten any credible reports of this happening.”
However, Slattery called the 15-year-old machines “antiquated," and McElrath wants to see a return of paper ballots to ensure every vote has a hard copy.
“It is unacceptable for the Texas Secretary of State and the Harris County Clerk to write off what is happening as user error,” she wrote in a statement posted to Twitter Friday afternoon where she also called for a requirement for election workers to warn voters in areas where the issue has been reported.
One thing all sides agreed on: Voters should double-check their summary page before casting their ballot.
Slattery says any voter that sees errors or has questions should flag an election worker immediately. He also says voters can call his organization’s election hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE.