After software issues caused problems on Election Day, Dallas County commissioners say they may look for other service providers for future elections.
Commissioners on Tuesday told representatives with the county’s election software provider, Election Systems & Software, that the company must solve its issues ahead of the May 3 election. Otherwise, they would look for an alternative provider.
However, getting answers in time for the next election may prove difficult as the next available time to certify their system with the Texas Secretary of State would be in July.
Software glitches during this year’s general election impacted thousands of voters, with nearly 4,000 people in the county getting the wrong ballot in the first two days of early voting. Additional glitches also threw off the ballot count by nearly 200 votes at a Desoto early voting location.
Election Administrator Heider Garcia said the issue could be attributed to a volume problem with the ES&S software version that was certified by the state.
“What I know from the state is that they saw the issues in other counties to a lower extent,” Garcia said. “Counties that didn't have the turnout or the number of devices that we had, which is why I tend to believe that this might have been a volume issue.”
But Commissioner John Wiley Price said otherwise.
“We had one of the lowest turnouts, hell, that we’ve had in a while,” Price said. “So why was it a volume issue?”
Price asked if it was possible to have an emergency certification done for the system in time for the next election, but ES&S Vice President Will Wesley said that would depend on what Texas law allowed.
“Now that we have had this conversation, we absolutely are going to go back and take a look at emergency certification because we want the fix to be completely in place, so you don't have this problem ever again,” Wesley said.
Garcia said it is up to ES&S to have an emergency certification done, not the county.
But County Judge Clay Jenkins said they would want not only a state certified system but one that was evaluated by a third party.
“If you can’t even get it certified, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “And then the second thing is, somebody to look at it and make sure it actually works.”
Jenkins also said he considered bringing forward a court order to replace ES&S with another vendor, but it would cost taxpayers $2-3 million.
The county’s four-year contract with ES&S is set to expire in the summer.
Garcia told commissioners that obtaining a new poll book vendor would not be rational. He also added that there was no guarantee that another vendor would not have issues.
“No matter who you buy, no matter what you do, there's always a chance you can find a software defect in any product,” Garcia said.
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