Tarrant County addresses election concerns in meeting

Tarrant County residents and commissioners on Tuesday got a crash course in elections after weeks of citizens raising concerns about the process. Tarrant County Election Administrator Heider Garcia walked through a 71-page presentation addressing the intricacies of how elections are run and answering common questions. Dozens of people signed up to speak on Tuesday, Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley said at the top of the meeting. The room was packed as county officials spent more than an hour speaking ahead of public comment. Roughly 20 others at one point sat outside the building watching a livestream of the meeting on a television. Members of the public also tuned in from an overflow room. “What I hope everybody will learn from the meeting is that we have a very well-thought-out process that we believe is not only very transparent but also maintains, which is our top priority, maintains the integrity of the voting process,” Whitley told the Star-Telegram ahead of the meeting.

Commissioners are limited in their response to citizens who discuss issues not on the meeting’s agenda, so Tuesday’s work session offered an opportunity to address issues that have been brought up in recent weeks during public comment. The meeting comes after a primary election that ran less than smoothly. Across the state, including in Tarrant County, hundreds of mail-in ballots were rejected because of a new ID requirement as part of the Legislature’s wide-ranging election bill. There were was also a Democratic poll worker shortage and delayed election results after a computer malfunction. Garica’s presentation aimed to answer frequent questions, like why there are separate lines for Democrats and Republicans when voters go to cast ballots in primaries (the parties don’t hold joint primaries). He reviewed the costs of elections, absentee voting, how results are tallied and stressed that the results can be audited. He stressed that there’s a paper ballot for every voter and that voting equipment is regularly tested. Some members of the public expressed confidence in the election system.