Tarrant expects faster election results after software update

A software bug that delayed Tarrant County election night results during the March primary is not expected to be a problem in November — an election with high-profile state and local races on that ballots that are likely to draw larger crowds than the earlier election. The March results were not available until early the next morning because of a malfunction related to a machine in a tabulation room used for unofficial results on election night. The unofficial results are typically released faster than their official counterpart, allowing for candidates and voters to see who won and who lost sooner. Tarrant County Election Administrator Heider Garcia explained at the time that each voting machine has two USB drives containing identical copies of election results. The results from one drive are sent to a machine via an internet server, allowing the public to get faster, unofficial results.

Election officials opted to transmit the official results stored in the other drive manually after the computer that receives the unofficial results malfunctioned. That procedure was repeated in May during the primary runoffs — a planned decision, Garcia said — after officials didn’t have time to test new software installed following the March malfunction. There’s still a final test to be done before the midterm election — likely in the coming week or so — but the plan is to go back to using the original method of disseminating election results come Nov. 8, Garcia said in a Monday interview. Preliminary testing has been successful, he said. This allows for people to get a quick view of what’s happening with results, he said. “Right now the expectation is we should be using the unofficial tool and ... have results early up on the website,” Garcia said in a Monday. “But if we find out this week or next week that bug was imperfectly fixed, we’re uncomfortable, then we want to set the right expectation and say, Look we thought it was solved but it wasn’t. It’s going to take a long time.” The office this week is testing various aspects of its voting equipment to make sure it is working and ballot selections properly recorded. There’s a possibility of issues arising again that delay the election night results, but “the odds of something new and different happening and causing a delay, I would say are extremely small.”