HOUSTON – The Texas Secretary of State’s office is asking the Harris County Clerk to clarify what they call “apparent discrepancies” between early voting totals submitted to the Secretary of State’s office and the numbers posted to the county’s early voting webpage.
Monday night, Kristi Hart, manager of elections administration and voter registration for the Secretary of State, emailed Harris County director of elections Michael Winn and assistant election administrator Jennifer Ballard saying, “I am not sure if the reported numbers are correct on our site or on the total vote reports on the Harris County site."
Hart then asked which totals were “most accurate,” stating that incorrect vote totals would need to be removed and resubmitted.
The daily record of early voting from the Harris County Clerk’s Office shows 1,149,047 total early voters on Monday.
But on the Texas Secretary of State’s website, that number, provided by Harris County, is increased by more than 2,300, showing 1,151,399 total voters on Monday.
“The fact that we have thousands of vote differential in the middle of early voting means somebody’s count is wrong, and if somebody counts wrong voters could be disenfranchised,” said Republican State Senator Paul Bettencourt.
In a statement to KPRC 2, Elizabeth Lewis, spokesperson for Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, said the different numbers were the result of a “slight lag in reporting from when we push results to the Secretary of State versus when we publish them.”
She added “Unofficial results are provided daily from the Harris County Clerk’s office. They are unofficial until after the hearing and canvass period after an election. Any discrepancies between the Secretary of State’s website, and the official results put out by the Harris County Clerk, will be rectified once the official results come out.”