Travis County Commissioners Court
November 14, 2008
Item 1
1. Canvass election returns and declare results for the November 4, 2008 joint general and special elections. Ms. Dana debeauvoir.
>> thank you, judge, pursuant to section 67 of the Texas election code we would like to offer before the court the final results of the November 4th election. This is the official canvass so the numbers have all been adjusted to include the legally eligible late ballots that arrived from military and overseas and to include by mail that wasn't processed in time for results on election night. Request waiver of reading the precinct by precinct election results and please include the cumulative total as well as the precinct in the records of the Commissioners court.
>> okay. A couple or three questions before we do that.
>> certainly.
>> we received an e-mail from a constituent who had two or three questions. The first one referenced precinct 272. And that was a 600% voter turnout stated somewhere.
>> right. It is in there.
>> his question was what does that mean?
>> good question. Why would you have 600% turnout in one precinct. The answer is precinct 272 and 274 were combined into one polling place. Precinct 272 has no voters. It's one of those 0 precincts, so we put it with another one. Bylaw I'm required to have at least an array of ballots for any precinct that is created by redistricting, that's what happened with this one. The judge, it is an error. The judge accidentally gave out basically six ballot that's should have been the 274 format instead of the 272 format. The formats are identical. So there was no effect on the outcome of the election or the people that were qualified to vote. That was all fine. They just received the wrong format. They should have gotten the format for 274. All of the names on the signup sheet matched to the total number of votes that were issued for the combined precinct of 272 and 274 and rather than try to cover up a judge's innocent mistake, what we do is a traditional thing, we leave it in there and provide the explanation to the people why this happened. Everybody voted legitimately.
>> I think his point was that if everybody had voted it would be 100%. So he was wondering how we got to 600.
>> if you start with 0 voters and you add six ballots to it, you add six ballots to it. That should have been issued under the 274 precinct banner instead of the 272.
>> okay. When we caught that mistake, what did we do?
>> there's nothing we could do. The judge already issued the ballot, the ballot is voted and in the box. What we do is report it and we explain it.
>> did we explain that to the gentleman that sent the e-mail?
>> yes, we did.
>> okay. He also said that -- that 0 ballots were cast on election day for any presidential write-in candidates.
>> wrong.
>> so that is incorrect. We did, because of the huge crush of work that we did on election night. We could not accumulate all of the write-ins on election night. You saw the write-ins along with all of the other work that takes place to reconcile everything to include all of the late mailed ballots. We added them at that time, there were plenty of write-in ballots. They are not available posted on our website. We couldn't -- didn't have the people to do it on election night. They were always voted and they were always going to be counted and it's the standard practice for us to produce it later.
>> if he were to go to the county website, we would see a total of all of the votes cast for write-in candidates.
>> all of them. Representing what is the canvass that's going in your official records. Once again it's unofficial. We are still voting when election night finishes, maybe most people don't know that, but that is the law. The votes are not final-final until today when you accept the canvass.
>> okay. In terms of updates we have been working on election results up until I guess very recently.
>> last night we were finishing up and auditing our final canvass to the 12 entities that participating November 4.
>> now the results that he sees are the ones that we are approving today.
>> yes, sir.
>> okay. Any other questions? Comments?
>> no.
>> motion?
>> I move that we -- that we exempt the reading of the -- of all of the precinct by precinct results and that we approve the canvass returns.
>> and waive reading of precinct by precinct today and approve the total tally that's before us.
>> thank you.
>> as well as execute the order prepared by the county attorney's office?
>> uh-huh.
>> all that's in the motion.
>> and seconded by Commissioner Daugherty.
>> uh-huh.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote of the three present.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>>
>> [indiscernible] make sure that we could handle the volume of people. You all did a great job supporting Travis County voters. I would like to personally thank you because I know each of you called me and we talked about it at length. I really appreciate it.
>> it was a huge turnout with very few glitches to our knowledge.
>> it was incredibly smooth.
>> okay.
>> yeah. Thank you.
>> thank you and your people and all of the -- all of the Travis County residents who worked in the election. That number was pretty big, wasn't it?
>> they did a great job. There was probably 2500. You could tell from the first day when they were in their training classes that these judges were focused, paying attention. When they got slammed first thing 7:00 a.m. On Tuesday morning, election day, they kept their calm, organized, they did a beautiful job for us.
>> okay.
>> and if they have not received their check yet, it's in the mail.
>> it's in the mail
>> [laughter]
>> all right. Thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, November 14, 2008 1:38 PM