Galveston officials fume over new voting system
County sending letter to the state about problems in weekend election

By HARVEY RICE    Houston Chronicle
GALVESTON — Galveston County is sending a letter complaining about severe problems with a new centralized voting system and urging the other 223 counties using it to send their complaints to state officials.

After hearing how the system nearly derailed Saturday's election, County Judge Jim Yarbrough on Wednesday asked Tax Assessor-Collector Cheryl Johnson to draft a letter to the Texas secretary of state.

"The secretary of state backed us in this corner to use the system, and, by God, they ought to get it fixed," Yarbrough said.

Yarbrough said commissioners would approve the letter and a request that the secretary of state's office repay the county for extra expenses caused by the system.

He also said the county would examine the possibility of buying its own computer system to bypass the Texas Elections Administration Management System, or TEAM, which came online in January.

Election officials statewide have complained of TEAM's molasses-like slowness, mangled data, deletion of voter names and other flaws. At least four counties have ped the system because of its problems, and 28 counties, including Harris, refused to join.

'System did not perform'
Johnson, a fierce critic of the system, has said she believes the system can be fixed if the secretary of state's office pressures prime contractor IBM and its partner, Austin-based Hart InterCivic.

"We've been putting pressure on them ever since we went live," said Scott Haywood, spokesman for the secretary of state.

"I think there is no question the system did not perform as much as we would like it to leading up to early voting," Haywood said. But since then, performance has improved as IBM-Hart devotes more effort on the problems, he said.

"This is a new system. There have been some bumps in the road," he said.

Officials continued to report problems after Saturday's election. "The bugs are not worked out, because we are trying to enter people who voted, and it's very slow," said Candy Arth, Washington County tax assessor-collector and president of the Tax Assessor-Collector's Association.

Johnson told commissioners that flaws in TEAM delayed the production of voting lists for polling places, slowing delivery of the final lists to 15 polling places until evening before Saturday's election.

The system caused her elections coordinator to put in 100 hours of overtime, she told commissioners.

A different system
Not all counties had problems. Brazoria County Tax Assessor-Collector Ro'Vin Garrett said she had no problem printing voter lists, although she, too, had problems with the system.

But Brazoria uses a unified system, meaning Garrett's office only had to print a single list. Galveston County does not have a unified system, which would require approval from each of 65 taxing jurisdictions, so Johnson had to print separate lists.

"Cheryl has to print poll books for dozens of entities, where in Brazoria they just print one poll book," Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt said.

Although Harris County did not join the TEAM system, employees must upload voter registration information daily to be in compliance with the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

"There is no question that having this election in a low-turnout election was a godsend for everybody involved," Bettencourt said.