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Saturday, April 1, 2000

Kleberg County recount finds no results changed

By Jeremy Schwartz
Caller-Times

Paul Iverson/Caller-Times

Roberto Moreno, Kleberg County Democratic chairman, said lessons learned during the recount will result in an accurate runoff election on April 11.

KINGSVILLE - Kleberg County officials and winning candidates breathed a sigh of relief Friday after a recount of ballots revealed no changes in the results of six contested local races in the Democratic primary.
   While the recount showed candidates received fewer votes than originally thought, candidate percentages remained almost exactly the same.
   "I am very much relieved," said County Clerk Sam Deanda, whose office did both the original count and Friday's recount. "The Democratic chair depended on us to do a job, so, sure, when something like this happens, you're concerned. The people put their trust in you to be fair and impartial."
   A routine count of the ballots by Tax Assessor-Collector Melissa Trevino on Monday revealed that two $30,000 scanners had tallied an extra 1,343 ballots on election night.
   Democratic Party Chair Roberto Moreno said officials would put the lessons learned this week to good use and promised a clean runoff election April 11.
   "I don't know much about scanners, but I know about Kleberg County politics," he said. "I knew some of those guys would still be the winners."
   Officials said Friday the counting error likely was caused when results from one scanner were incorrectly added to the results of the second scanner, causing some ballots to be counted up to three times.
   Processing problems

Paul Iverson/Caller-Times

Frances Caldera (left) and Terri Garcia process reports from a scanner used to count ballots in the March 14 Democratic primary election in Kleberg County.

   Alicia Gamez, deputy county clerk, said a representative with Hart Information Services, the company that sold the scanners to the county, mistakenly instructed county staff not to zero out vote totals before transferring computer disks between scanners.
   Gamez said the representative may have been accustomed to working with counties that use additional software that is often used with multiple scanners. "He asked, and he knew we didn't have the software," she said.
   Charles Scott, a sales consultant with Hart Information Services, said the software is helpful, but not a requirement in counting ballots.
   County Commissioner Romeo Lomas said he is going to recommend that the county buy the $12,000 software to ensure that errors don't happen again.
   Kleberg County has used the scanners, built by Nebraska-based Election Systems and Software Inc., for six years to tabulate ballots.
   Ray of hope
   For some candidates on the losing end of the March 14 primary election, Friday's recount was a ray of hope.
   "I'm hoping for a runoff," said Adalberto Naranjo, who finished second in the race for county commissioner Precinct 3, before the recount results were announced. "If those votes are taken away, I'm curious to see who gets them."
   After the recount showed incumbent Dewey Hubert increased his winning margin, Naranjo said he was disappointed. "Needless to say, I hoped for something better," he said. "But I say good luck to the guy that won."
   Larger margin
   The race closest to being plunged into a runoff involved Sheriff Tony Gonzalez, who two weeks ago received 51 percent of the vote in his re-election bid. Candidates need more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff.
   After Friday's recount, Gonzalez increased his percentage to 52 percent. "It's another victory for us," he said. "We felt confident the results would be the same."
   The recount results saved the Democratic Party thousands of dollars that would have been used to print up new ballots to reflect any changes. Democratic Party officials printed their runoff ballots Thursday.
   'Trust the machine'
   The unchanged results also mean there will be no new candidates with just two weeks to campaign before the April 11 runoff election.
   The county's election problems did not scare away the city of Kingsville, which on Friday got permission to rent the scanners to count ballots for its May 6 city-wide election.
   "We trust the machine," said Kingsville City Manager Hector Hinojosa. "In past elections we've used (the scanners) and never had a problem."
   The city of Kingsville pays $450 to rent the scanners and uses its own staff to do the counting.
   Kleberg County is the fourth county in Texas to recount its ballots following the March 14 primary because of a scanner-related problem, said Ann McGeehan, director of the Secretary of State's elections division.
   Bell, Webb and LaSalle Counties did recounts in the week after the election to correct counting errors. In Webb County a programming error caused scanners to malfunction, while in LaSalle County write-in votes were counted twice. In Bell County, scanners stopped working altogether.

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