Texas Secretary of State John Scott on Tuesday released a report on the second and final phase of the agency’s full forensic audit of the 2020 General Election in four of Texas’ largest counties: Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant.
In charge of running the audit and analysis were Scott, Texas Secretary of State, Chad Ennis, Director of Forensic Audit Division, and Jacqueline Hagan Doyer, Deputy & Legal Director of Forensic Audit Division.
This report sets forth the requirements under the Texas Election Code in 2020 that each county must follow and evaluates whether they met these requirements and is organized by key events in the election process.
Phase 2 of the audit, undertaken over the past year by the Texas Secretary of State’s Forensic Audit Division, included a comprehensive examination of election records from the 2020 General Election in each of the four counties, resulting in more than 369 GB of data obtained.
The Phase 2 final report, which spans 360 pages, includes key findings from the 2020 General Election on aspects of the election process, including: reconciliation of voters checked in versus ballots cast; physical security of election equipment; adequacy of counties’ training materials; ballotby- mail processes; provisional ballots; voter registration; and complaints received regarding alleged irregularities.
“From the beginning of my time as Texas Secretary of State, I made clear that audit process was meant to provide factual, objective information on the 2020 General Election process in Texas, and that’s exactly what we have released to the public today,” Scott said.
“Texas has some of the strongest and most effective transparency measures in the country when it comes to administering and auditing elections. The Texas forensic election audit - which is, by far, the largest undertaken in the nation to date - demonstrates how these measures can and should be used to make sure Texas voters can have confidence in the outcome of any given election, as well as which areas counties need to address to restore confidence going forward.”
Ennis writes the following in the executive summary of the report: “When the Texas Election Code and local procedures are followed, Texas voters should have a very high level of confi dence in the accuracy of the outcome of Texas elections. Each of the four counties has detailed procedures and detailed forms to document compliance with the code and ensure that only lawful ballots are cast and counted. When procedures are followed, results of the election are trustworthy. Indeed, in most cases, the audit found that the counties followed their procedures and clearly documented their activities. In some cases, however, they did not. As outlined in this Report, in cases where procedures were not followed, discrepancies and irregularities ranging from small to large ensued.”
The report indicated that Harris County had serious issues in handling electronic media so severed the FAD notified county officials prior to the 2022 elections. In at least 14 polling locations, mobile ballot boxes (MBB) contained votes that did not have the proper chain of custody; the county was unable to provide documentation for the creation of 17 MBBs. Additionally, the county did not have an inventory of their warehoused records for the 2020 General Election and cannot confirm all the records. FAD observed the label used on the outside of the boxes inaccurately described the contents. Harris County was the only county that did not provide a “list of Early Voting or Election Day polling locations that had a discrepancy of one percent or more between the number of voters that checked in to the number of votes cast at that location.
Dallas County experienced two large problems during the 2020 General Election. First, they had multiple problems with their electronic pollbooks. Second, they lost several experienced staff members. The county’s pollbook issues created what were termed “phantom voters”. When a voter checked in, the electronic pollbook checked in a different voter. FAD verified that this affected 188 voters. The county also misplaced 318 provisional votes that were discovered in February 2021 after the election had been certified. Sixty-three of these ballots would have counted if processed correctly. The FAD also located 21 unopened ballots in sealed carrier envelopes. Dallas also showed 76,991 ballots left the EVBB but 78,147 were recorded in the canvass.
Tarrant County findings: electronic media containing mail ballots were named inconsistently, making tracking ballots difficult. The numbers were ultimately verified through other documentation. Election workers were not consistent in printing zero tapes prior to the opening of polls.
Collin County proved to be best of the group and while not perfect, the county’s records management, record quality, and procedures were unmatched. Indeed, Collin County did not have any polling locations where the pollbook check ins were more than 1% of the ballots cast. The county had 21 voters receive ballots by mail who were not entitled to vote by mail.
None of the four counties meaningfully tracked applications for ballot by mail when the application did not lead to sending a ballot by mail to the voter. Although not required by the Texas Election Code, the counties should have had a system for logging these applications for ballots by mail in order to detect fraud or mistakes.
Another problem common to the counties was the coding of mail ballot eligibility.