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Election results reported nearly 12 hours after polls closed
The county clerk says a last-minute advisory changed their previously approved Election Night reporting process.
HOUSTON - Election results were released nearly 12 hours after polls closed. The Harris County Clerk says a last-minute advisory changed their previously approved Election Night reporting plan and delayed the process.
Polls closed in Harris County at 7 p.m. Tuesday, and the full unofficial election results were released around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman released a statement overnight saying they were working through the night to get results up.
“As you may know, these changes were prompted by a last minute advisory from the Texas Secretary of State that changed our previously approved Election Night reporting process,” she said the statement. “Our Office is as frustrated as everyone else because of the State’s decision.”
She said in the statement that the change requires a more manual process than the previous plan which “involved transmitting results electronically over a secured encrypted private network, the intranet (as opposed to the internet) which is what we used in the May election.”
“Our contingency plan involved law enforcement officers picking up results from 10 drop off sites and delivering them to Central Count at our downtown office for tabulation. We had been advised by the County Attorney that our previous plan was legal and complied with election code. We are disappointed that we were not able to use the same system we utilized for the May election, the same system used by my predecessor in the last November election,” Trautman said in the statement.
She thanked the 231,419 voters who cast their ballot, which exceeded the number of votes in the November 2015 election.
“Our office is committed to making voting easier and more convenient,” Trautman said in the statement.