The State of Texas Elections Division Phone: 512-463-5650 P.O. Box 12060 .. ~33; 5 .- Fax: 512-475-2811 Austin, Texas 78711-2060 I t=53; Dial 7-1-1 For Relay Services (800) 252-VOTE (8683) Rolando B. Pablos Secretary of State May 11, 2017 The Honorable Mary Horn 110 West Hickory Street, 2nd Floor Denton, Texas 76201 Dear Judge Horn: This letter is in response to Denton County?s request that the Of?ce of the Texas Secretary of State review procedures during its general election of November 8, 2016 and make recommendations. I. Meetings and Discussions with Denton County Elections Officials As you know, the Of?ce was involved in the election in Denton County from November 8, 2016 onward. Our Of?ce spoke with several persons in Denton County regarding the election that evening and in the days and weeks to follow. I personally spoke to the previous elections administrator, Lannie Noble, and the current elections administrator, Frank Phillips, on several occasmns. II. Review of Procedures Following your request for a more formal assessment, one of our attorneys visited the Denton County Elections Department on February 9, 2017. Our of?ce met with you, each member of the Denton County Elections Of?ce staff, and members of the Republican and Democratic parties of Denton County, to assist in the review of issues that arose in the November 8, 2016 general election. Observations As a result of the review, several things became apparent regarding the November 8, 2016 general election in Denton County. A. Function of Equipment Denton County uses the Hart eSlate 6.2.1 DRE and Hart 1.3.14 eScan Optical Scan systems. Section 125.002 of the Texas Election Code provides that ?[b]efore voting system equipment is delivered to a polling place for use in an election, the authority responsible for distributing the election supplies to the polling place shall have the equipment put in proper order for use as prescribed by the secretary of state.? We noted that some early voting locations had their DRE voting equipment deployed in the incorrect mode of ?Election Day?, instead of ?Early Voting.? Page 2 In addition, many voting machines deployed on Election Day were deployed in the incorrect mode. Speci?cally, certain DRE voting equipment was deployed in the incorrect mode of ?Early Voting?, and certain Optical Scan equipment was deployed in the incorrect mode of ?Test?, instead of both types of machines being deployed in ?Election Day? mode. For the Optical Scan equipment, voters were unable to have their ballots read at the polling place, and were instead required to use the emergency ballot slot on the voting machine. B. Ballots The Of?ce learned that several polling places were sent incorrect ballot stock, resulting in some voters being provided with incorrect ballots. The Of?ce also became aware that when election day voting equipment was returned to the Denton County Elections Of?ce, the ballot boxes were not clearly labeled as to whether the ballots in them came from the emergency ballot slot and had not been counted, versus those that had been tabulated. See, Accordingly, there was confusion as to which ballots had already been tabulated, and which still needed to be counted. In addition, there was no Central Counting Station established, and thus, there was no method for the returned ballots to be counted at a central location. See TEX. ELEC. CODE Chapter 127, Subchapter A. These issues resulted in Denton County needing to obtain a court order in order to have the ballots correctly counted. C. Signage Denton County posted incorrect signage pertaining to voter identi?cation information during both early voting and on Election Day at certain polling places. This Of?ce had circulated the correct signage to every County to be posted on September 21, 2016 following a Court Order, and also sent a reminder e-mail to every County on October 25, 2016. It also speci?cally reached out to Denton County during early voting regarding reports of incorrect signage at certain of its polling places; Denton County subsequently con?rmed the correct polling place posters were posted at the speci?c polling places. IV. Causes There were several causes that lead to these issues. First and most signi?cantly, the issues arose due to insuf?cient staf?ng. The lack of staf?ng resulted in inadequate review of critical election processes by the Denton County Elections Of?ce staff, as many items were not reviewed by multiple different members of staff. Additionally, the Denton County Elections Of?ce technical operations manager left the of?ce in July 2016 and the replacement began work in September. The replacement did not have suf?cient time to be trained fully and did not have a background in elections. V. Recommendations and Results The recommendations the Of?ce would make to rectify these issues were already in process in Denton County when the formal review was initiated. Various staf?ng changes are in process. Most signi?cantly, Denton County has appointed a new elections administrator. The Denton Page 3 County Elections Of?ce has also requested additional staf?ng so that multiple employees will be able to review and con?rm that critical elections procedures are completed. In addition, the new technical operations manager has had more training in the tasks of the position. The Denton County Elections Of?ce has also purchased new scheduling software that creates tasking lists for employees, providing an additional level of review for supervisors and the elections administrator. The new elections administrator has also prOposed changes to training and policies within the department, as well as retraining, to ensure that critical election tasks are completed properly. Moreover, the Denton County Elections Of?ce has purchased systems that will streamline election processes and provide additional checks to ensure that election processes are being completed correctly. We believe that the steps taken and the addition of more staff will work to prevent a recurrence of the issues that occurred in the general election. We commend Mr. Phillips for his work with our of?ce on this assessment and for his willingness to leave no stone unturned in improving the processes at issue. Our of?ce looks forward to working with Denton County in the future. If you do have additional questions or require anything additional, please to not hesitate to contact me. Sincerely, Director, Elections Division