The Texas District Attorney discovered on Tuesday that the election could go very wrong.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg went to the polls to vote for herself in the Democratic primary, only to be told she had already voted, which was news to her, according to KTRK-TV.
Election officials reviewed records to learn that Ogg's local partner, who shared the same address, had participated in early voting. The partner vote was cast as Ogg.
“It's very troubling for this to happen to a candidate, and you know, I just want to warn people — make sure you know who you're voting for in terms of your name,” Ogg said. “I've never seen this happen before.”
“I'm the top law enforcement official in the third-largest jurisdiction in the country,” Ogg told CNN. “If this can happen to a prosecutor, it can happen to anyone.”
The bug was fixed on Tuesday, so Og could vote.
“No election is flawless. There are smooth elections, and we usually get it all smoothed out in a very timely manner,” Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth said, according to KTRK.
Hudspeth issued a full explanation in a statement, according to KRIV.
“An incident occurred this morning when Democratic Representative Kim Ogg went to the polls and was unable to cast her vote because the ballot had already been cast in her name. “Last Friday, DA Ogg’s partner, registered to vote at the same address as DA Ogg, voted in the primary under the name DA Ogg,” Hudspeth said.
“In the voter onboarding process, each voter is asked to review and confirm the information that appears on the iPad screen, including the voter’s name. “If the information that appears on the screen is inaccurate, the voter must notify the election clerk,” the statement continued.
“In this case, the DA partner must not have noticed that the information was not hers, and proceeded to log in and vote as DA Ogg. We believe this to be the case because DA Ogg's partner signed her name as confirmation.
The statement said the error was not the fault of the clerk's office.
“Clerical errors can occur at the ballot box. The statement said that the voter is responsible for verifying the accuracy of his information on the iPad screen before issuing the ballot code to him.
Ogg told CNN she had some problems with the explanation.
“The whole reason we have election judges and poll workers is to prevent voter fraud, so checking ID against the person voting and against the rolls is entirely the employee’s job,” she said. “I was shocked when they put it back to the voter.”
Ogg said she is concerned that similar errors could disenfranchise voters without having time to wait.
“The average citizen probably wouldn't have waited an hour and still not been able to vote,” Ogg said, according to KHOU.
“When I left I was worried that people would have to take the kids and be at work, and if they were having these kinds of problems, I would urge them to be patient, but I was worried that voters might get turned off by this mistake and leave.”
This article originally appeared in The Western Journal.
