WRONG ELECTION NIGHT COUNTING IN AUSTIN COUNTY

  

The election night vote totals from Austin County were wrong for the March 4^th primary eleand it took well over a week before the correct results to be reported.

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 had 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, Monday 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 mis-reporting votes, incorrectly analyzing voter machine of voter machine results and  errors in reporting the early voting results.