Tens of thousands of Bexar County voters are casting ballots every day for early voting, but not always easily.
KSAT spoke with multiple voters who said voting machines changed or removed their selections during the process.
Though they all blamed the machines, the Bexar County Elections Department is pointing to user error as the likely culprit in such cases.
Technical issues with voting tabulators have also forced polls to temporarily collect ballots in emergency ballot boxes at multiple locations. Election officials, though, say those ballots will also be counted.
KSAT spoke with three Bexar County voters on Thursday who said their selections were either changed or dropped.
All of them caught the issues, though, and their ballots reflected the choice they wanted to make.
Ashton Lasater told KSAT over the phone that while voting in Converse Community Events Center on Thursday morning, she watched her selection change for governor from Gina Hinojosa (D) to Greg Abbott (R) after she had made her selection and while her hand was away from the screen.
Lasater said she fixed the choice and continued, but later saw while reviewing her choice that her selection of Joe Rosenthal (D) for Texas Railroad Commissioner had changed to Bo French (R). She was able to change it back, but she said it took two taps.
Another woman voting at the Wonderland of the Americas Thursday, who declined to give her name, said she got to the end of her ballot and saw several selections she was sure she made weren’t recorded and had to go back to enter them again.
Letty Gonzales told KSAT her vote for James Talarico (D) in the U.S. Senate race changed to Ken Paxton (R) twice on the machine she was using at the Macedonia Baptist Church.
Though she ultimately ensured her printed ballot had her choices, Gonzales was left concerned.
“You know, most times when I am voting, I’m pretty much rushing through this during my lunch hour, you know, during the day and wanting to get back to work,” she said. “I noticed that, I was careful to triple check, but others that are rushing in and out to vote, or just simply counting on the machines to do the right thing and not have any issues.”
“I’m just worried that other people may not pay attention to the choices, and it’s switching their selections,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales reported her experience to the Bexar County Elections Department on Thursday and the man she talked to had said he would pull the machine.
However, when KSAT visited the polling site Thursday afternoon, an election judge said there was nothing wrong with the machine and it had not been pulled. He said they received three new machines, though.
A Bexar County spokesman responded to KSAT questions with an emailed statement.
“In nearly all cases where discrepancy is reported, it is the result of a voter’s inadvertent selection of a candidate or not reviewing their selections before finalizing it.
We encourage all voters to carefully verify their printed ballot summary before casting it. If a voter believes their printed ballot does not match their intended selections, they should immediately notify a poll worker so the issue can be addressed immediately.”
Bexar County Elections Department
At least three early voting locations have had issues with the “tabulators” that voters feed their ballots into after making their selections.
KSAT reported on issues at the Leon Valley Conference Center on Tuesday, and voters reported issues at Parman Library on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, though others said it was fine by the time KSAT visited the site Thursday afternoon.
Alex Ortiz told KSAT when he went to vote at Wonderland of the Americas, he said the judge told him the machine was broken and they were putting his ballot in a “strong box.”
“With what’s going on in the world today, and things are changing, I just didn’t feel comfortable. But I went ahead and voted, you know, hoping that my vote will be registered later in the day,” he said.
Had the election judge come out and told the line of voters what was going on earlier, Ortiz said he may have just decided to vote another day.
“I want to see my vote with my eyes physically put in that machine,” he said. “That way I know my vote counted.”
In a statement through a county spokesman, Bexar County Elections Administrator Michelle Carew assured that votes like Ortiz’s would be counted.
“When a tabulator is unavailable, voters are offered the option to place their completed ballot into a secure, sealed Emergency Ballot Box.
These ballots are:
• Individually accounted for in the site’s chain‑of‑custody logs
• Stored in a locked compartment that can only be accessed by bipartisan election officials
• Transported and scanned as soon as the tabulator is restored or replaced All emergency ballots are counted in the same manner as ballots scanned on site.
They are included in the unofficial election results once they are processed through a functioning tabulator. No ballots are lost or discarded during these outages.”
Michele Carew, Bexar County Elections Administrator
The Bexar County Elections Department used near identical language in an infographic posted to social medica Thursday.
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