Houston City Council to acquire new voting tabulators

At the latest City of Houston Council Meeting, discussions loomed around an ordinance to purchase new voting tabulators. From the moment the Resolution was introduced for public hearing, there were concerns from Councilman Carter Cole, who introduced a motion to postpone purchasing the tabulators indefinitely.

Cole referenced reports from various news agencies that indicated questions from the Federal government about the validity of the tabulators the city is looking to purchase, as well as the current tabulators the city borrows.

“We should wait until the federal lawsuits are settled,” Cole argued, and instead pushed for using hand-counted votes in the interim.

“One hand-count for 2022 until we are sure of what we’re getting is good and we don’t need to re-purchase something later would be prudent,” he stated.

In January of this year, the Houston City Clerk was notified by the State of Alaska Division of Elections that municipalities will no longer be able to borrow state election equipment, including ballot tabulators. This decision is effective for the local elections in 2022.

The removal of the current ballot tabulators comes as the state is moving to comply after voters approved Ballot Measure 2, which established ranked-choice voting for the general election. The Division of Elections requested funding for a new ballot tabulation module, election management software modifications, and other costs to ensure full implementation for the 2022 elections cycle.

In an email as part of the City Council agenda and handouts, it was explained that due to concerns about election system security, the division would no longer loan out vote tabulation equipment to local governments This has rendered Houston unable to use the same ballot tabulation equipment as the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Alaska and local Alaska communities use Dominion Voting as the ballot election tabulators.

City Clerk Rebecca Rein, who also functions as the elections administrator, indicated there is not enough time to postpone the purchase as the city isn’t able to borrow tabulators any longer. She further stated that while hand-counting ballots may be an option, there is a wider percentage of error when hand-counting, pointing to several court cases in which voting recounts that used hand-counted ballots, had been tossed out.

Another argument made in support of the ballot machines was that the machines actually count the ballots, they do not mark the ballots.

“What the machines actually do is scan the image of the ballot and read how voters marked that ballot. Furthermore, if the voter has mismarked the ballot, the screen will let the voter know that their ballot has been mismarked, and let election officials know that they (the voter) needs another ballot,” stated Rein.

Councilmember Sandra Porter stated she too had conducted research concerning the tabulators as she was skeptical after hearing reports of machines being responsible for voting result errors

“Everything I found was that while some of the voting issues have happened, there was an update that was processed the night before voting and that update is what created a lot of the issues,” she stated, “Nobody was informed the updates were going happen when they were pushed through.”

Porter went on to say the error rate many associate with the Dominion voting machines is actually the machine catching the error, not making the error itself.

When tabulators do catch an error, that ballot is moved into a separate pile to then be reviewed per local commissions. The current machines Houston uses rely on an SD card, not a computer chip as other tabulators use that have been called into question. Previously, the machines the city borrowed were sent with enough time to test for errors, and were different from the type of machines that had received any sort of computer update.

Deputy Mayor Lance Wilson expressed concern about the timely order for new tabulators, stating that Houston needs to be able to order and receive the new voting machines, and ensure they’re tested before the next election in October. He also addressed the possibility of hand counting the votes, saying:

“Hand counting, when done in the past the few ballots we’ve had to hand count due to discrepancies, is a very long period of time, too long. And you’re talking a handful of ballots out of 700. I really don’t think hand counting the ballots is a very efficient way to count ballots.”

Other council members inquired about ballots being re-run if there is a question about the results and if there are mechanisms in place to do random testing, to which the clerk said yes to both, and further stated that machines are very sensitive to errors.

Mayor Virgie Thompson threw her support behind the original resolution, stating, “This is not a one-person decision on what best works for communities. I have a lot of faith in the fact the clerks in Alaska get together, have a lot of conversations, do a lot of research, do a lot of recommendations, all from a pool of professional people.”

Ultimately the measure passed to order new voting tabulators.

Other measures that were discussed included acquiring new Firefighting Turnouts and related equipment, re-zoning several properties from public lands to single-family and 2-family residential districts and adopting a new official Land Use Map.

Ordinances introduced included adopting the Houston Annual Budget, which will include the Capital budget for the Fiscal Year.

The City of Houston holds City Council meetings the second Thursday of each month and are open to the public.