AUSTIN COUNTY WORKING TO IMPROVE ELECTION VOTE COUNT

  

The election night vote totals from Austin County were wrong for the March 4^th primary election, and it was well over a week for the correct results to be made public.

Austin County Tax Assessor Collector  Marcos Pena, who was in charge of the county vote count,  said the results were delayed at the outset due to power outages, freezing temperatures led to what he called ‘a total breakdown’ in communications and numerous problems with getting the results out.

While most area counties had their results out between nine and ten pm, that  night, the final results from Austin County did not come in until nearly one am March 5^th.  Those results had to be corrected, however.

The six-way county judges’ race will still come down to a May 27^th runoff between John Graham and Tim Lapham, though the two had a smaller margin of difference.  The final results, released this week, had Graham with 1205 votes to Lapham 1117 votes .  The Precinct Four Justice of the Peace had a completely different final result than what was reported on March fourth.  Instead of Brian King being named to the position,  Bernice Burger was elected.  Burger had a final vote total of 440 to King’s 417.

Pena said the primary vote results were a mix of misreporting votes, incorrectly analyzing voter machine oresults and  errors in reporting the early voting results.