The real problem: While lawmakers push additional ID requirements for casting ballots, a flawed computer database is purging already qualified voters from the rolls
May 5, 2007
Early balloting around the state for the May 12 election has resulted in long delays and frayed tempers in many locales. The difficulties had nothing to do with the unproven election fraud cited by state legislators as a justification for new laws mandating more extensive ID from voters.
Written by Editorial, Houston Chronicle
Early balloting around the state for the May 12 election has resulted in long delays and frayed tempers in many locales. The difficulties had nothing to do with the unproven election fraud cited by state legislators as a justification for new laws mandating more extensive ID from voters.
Instead, hundreds of people who went to the polls found their names had been removed because of glitches in a $14 million Web-based state computer program intended to centralize voter registration lists.
In a particularly embarrassing episode, the mayor of Prairie View, Frank Jackson, discovered when he attempted to vote early that his name and registration had vanished from the state-compiled list.
The IBM-Hart InterCivic system had been selected at the direction of former Secretary of State Geoffrey Connor, an appointee of Gov. Rick Perry, despite the fact it cost $800,000 more than a proven competitor, VOTEC. After the purchase, the vendor then substituted an untried computer system that is giving fits to election officials around the state.
Luckily, Harris County is one of 28 Texas counties that saw the problems coming and opted not to link into the system. Officials in those counties are still inconvenienced because they are required by law to enter new voter registrations into the system, a time-consuming process because the new program often rejects entries and deletes original registration numbers. Election officials say it can take up to four times as long to process the registration data using the new program.
Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt was a member of the state advisory committee that recommended against IBM-Hart InterCivic. He says he would never have chosen an untested system and called it "a bad technology system that is coming home to roost." Texas Tax Assessor Association President Cany Arth agrees with Bettencourt.
A bill passed by the Texas House last week would make the secretary of state responsible for authenticating the citizenship of everybody who registers to vote. After seeing the problems that have resulted from the selection of a flawed election data system, lawmakers should reconsider whether they really want to assign that additional responsibility to the secretary of state.
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