BELL COUNTY, Texas (KXXV) — The Bell County Elections Office is aware of a delay in posting the Daily Early Voting Reports and Rosters for Monday, October 21.
Public information officer James Stafford said the office is actively working throughout the day to resolve this issue and ensure it does not recur.
The delay did not impact any ballots or the vote tabulation process. It only affected the timing of reporting check-ins to the State and their availability online.
The issue was reported to the Secretary of State's Office early Tuesday morning, and they began working with representatives from the county's poll book provider, TENEX, to resolve it.
The Elections Office was eventually able to submit the mandatory reports to the Secretary of State's Office after the conversion issues were fixed. While this report was late, State Officials were aware and supportive of the county's efforts.
After the conversion problem was resolved, staff noticed a discrepancy between the number of check-ins shown in the report to the State and the total they had observed during the day and shared with media outlets.
By synchronizing the data from each poll book, officials determined that the running the cumulative report had been calculating check-ins from two polling places twice, resulting in an inflated check-in total.
This does not impact votes.
"We are passionate about ensuring that everything we do as a department reflects our commitment to conducting secure elections," Elections Administration Desi Roberts said. "Having that integrity means being transparent about small issues like today's so that voters know they can count on us to be transparent everywhere else."
While the county initially reported that 9,902 people had checked-in to vote on Monday, October 22, Daily Early Voting Reports, Tuesday shows that the correct total was 7,844.
That total still means more people checked in to vote yesterday than during any previous day of Early Voting in Bell County history, topping the busiest totals of the 2016 or 2020 elections, 6,926 and 7,393.
"We have been instructed to redact some details from the daily roster to ensure the secrecy of every voter's ballot," Roberts said, "and we are happy to do that so that our voters can trust in every aspect of our process."
