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Commissioners press election staff over duplicate and erroneous voter records; clerks to pull audit histories
Summary
After the joint primary produced reports of duplicate registrations, deceased voters on lists and ballot-machine calibration issues, commissioners asked election staff to compile a list of suspect records and pull audit histories to show who changed registrations; clerks reported vendor-calibration problems with thermal ballot stock.
Del Rio — Val Verde County Commissioners Court spent substantial time on problems observed during the most recent joint primary election, instructing election staff to compile flagged voter names and review audit trails showing who last changed those records.
Why it matters: County officials said voters complained about duplicates, incorrect precinct assignments and deceased people appearing on registration lists; clerks reported they had found roughly two dozen duplicates on election day and an additional 56 duplicates when reviewing the voter roll provided by the county’s VR (voter-registration) system. Commissioners asked for immediate follow-up to restore public confidence and identify the source of changes.
Election clerks told the court that the county uses the state-managed TEAM system as the authoritative voter roll and that county staff rely on audit history to see who edited records. A clerk said audit histories include a user ID and date for each change and that the county can ask the state to map a user ID to a named account; clerks reported they were manually reviewing tens of thousands of registrations to fix mismatches.
Separately, clerks reported multiple instances where ballot tabulators rejected ballots in early voting. A vendor (ES&S) told the office that the thermal-paper supplier had changed the thickness of the ballot stock without notifying the vendor, which affected machine calibration. Clerks said they recalibrated machines during early voting, will schedule maintenance before the next election cycle and would continue to store blank ballots under chain-of-custody procedures.
Court action and next steps: The judge moved and the court approved asking commissioners to submit a list of names for staff to pull audit histories and return those reports to the court, with a view toward centralizing responsibility for voter-roll changes under one department. Clerks will produce audit-history reports showing the date and user ID that last changed each flagged registration; the court said it will ask the state to map user IDs to users where necessary.
What was not decided: The court did not order termination or disciplinary action against identified staff; it also did not finalize whether a separate department would be created. The court instructed clerks to continue the review and report back.
Who said it: Comments and technical descriptions come from county election staff and court proceedings recorded during Item 21.
