Texas county starts election recount after "ballot coding error" leads to "skewed" results

Monday, a representative for a company that provides election tabulation machines for dozens of counties says something went wrong with the tabulations for several Democratic races in one county on Tuesday night.

It happened in Newton County, not far from Beaumont.

Results posted by the Texas Secretary of State show multiple candidates received zero votes.

And now, that issue has led to county-wide recount.

Newton County is 165 miles northeast of Houston, but when it comes to elections it is a world away.

Unlike Harris County's more than two and half million registered voters---Newton has fewer than 10,000.

But even that would not explain why James Talarico-who is the Democratic nominee for the US Senate---got exactly zero votes in Newton County.

That was the same for candidates in at least four other races.

In a court document filed by the district attorney, the county says it ran into issues with tabulating results on at least one machine, made by Election Systems & Software-a company that provides tabulating services for a lot of counties in Texas. That machine apparently freezing up briefly that was quickly resolved, according to a company spokesperson, Katina Granger. The main issue she says, a "ballot coding error" caused by human programming that shifted the ovals, leading to incorrect tabulation.

In an interview with the East Texas Banner, County Judge Ronnie-who won reelection last Tuesday---agreed with the decision to recount all votes in both primaries.

"I do agree we need to rerun the ballots, need to look at it and make sure everything is you know," Cochran said, "and I don't think it'll make much difference. But I do feel like it that it does need to happen."

Monday morning, the county clerk asked a judge for permission to recount both the numbers for both the Republican and Democratic primaries. Writing in a court filing "...the company discovered a problem in the programming that had led to skewed results for the first column of the Democratic primary election ballots..." and that "Newton County would need to conduct a recount with the correct programming."

The judge said yes. The counting began.

Joe Jaworski is a Democrat running for State Attorney General and is now in a runoff. The original count had him at zero.

"I like the fact that in Newton County, we have Republican elected officials who are flagging the error and fixing it," Jaworski said. "This goes to show that voting is not partisan. I compliment the clerk for doing the right thing."

As of late Monday, the recount results were not yet posted to the County's website. Though an assistant clerk told us over the phone to call back on Tuesday.