Elections administrator answers county questions about 2020 cast-vote records; commissioners approve Hart Intercivic upgrade amid open-records dispute

Brazos County’s elections administrator addressed the court’s questions about cast-vote records for the November 2020 general election and explained why the records the court was shown do not indicate missing ballots, while the court separately approved an election-system upgrade from Hart Intercivic.

Trudy Hancock, the county’s elections administrator, said the county upgraded from an all-electronic voting system to a hybrid paper-based system in August 2021. She told the court that archived computer files Hart Intercivic returned to the county were created on systems that sometimes contained an incorrect computer date and that an incorrect run date printed on a CVR report was the result of the vendor’s computer system date, not missing data.

Hancock explained how cast-vote records (CVRs) reflect the physical page processed by the scanner and how write-in handling appears in the CVR versus the certified…