LEE COUNTY, Texas (KBTX) – As thousands across the Brazos Valley begin early voting, a slight hiccup in Lee County Monday brought up questions about how voting machines work.
According to the Lee County judge, one of their voting machines had what appeared to be a calibration issue. The machine was immediately pulled out of service once the right people were notified.
The full statement from the county judge is below.
“When making your selections, you have to not rush. Because if you rush, you’re going to get ahead of the machine,” Teresa Shed, Lee County Elections Administrator, said.
Shed is urging voters to take their time and carefully review their selections before officially casting their ballot. That process can be done on a final review screen, where questions can then be revisited.
If a technical difficulty like this happens to you in the voting booth, Shed said all you have to do is ask a poll worker for help.
“We can take the steps to get you a new ballot to go back and sit at a machine and redo. As long as you have not scanned your ballot, we can spoil it and reissue,” she said.
Any voting issues should immediately be reported to poll workers or your county elections administrator.
“Please don’t leave the polling location and put it out there to everyone when it needs to be reported to the proper individuals,” Shed added.
The conversation about what happened in Lee County brought up other voting machine concerns. Shed addressed a number of common myths she said she’s heard from voters.
“The big one is the connection to the internet. The machines are not connected to the internet,” Shed stated.
According to her, the voting machines act as an electronic version of a paper ballot, and they do not ‘hold on’ to your vote.
“Once you print, the selections are gone,” Shed said, “Your votes are not counted until you scan it in the scanner.”
At this time, no other voting issues have been reported in Lee County.
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