Dallas County may switch pollbook vendor after election ballot problems

County Judge Clay Jenkins said he's preparing an item for commissioners to approve next month to change vendors if ES&S doesn't receive emergency certification of pollbook software fix from Texas Secretary of State

Dallas County Commissioners say they’re prepared to change providers of election pollbooks next year after nearly 4,000 voters received the wrong ballot in last month’s election.

The problem commissioners said Tuesday is its current pollbook vendor, Election Systems and Software (ES&S), hasn’t adequately addressed.

The scope of the problem was revealed when commissioners completed the required canvassing on November 19, two weeks after the election.

Representatives from ES&S attended the meeting on Tuesday and addressed the commissioners' court for the first time since the election.

Danda Parker with ES&S told commissioners election day was “not a great day for us and we know that.”

“We’d like to apologize to you (commissioners), we’d like to apologize to the elections office, to the poll workers of Dallas County and to the voters of Dallas County,” Parker said.

“The apologies and all are really aren’t acceptable,” commissioner John Wiley Price said in response.

Dallas County commissioners said they’re now looking to prepare for municipal and school board elections in May and said they did not receive assurances from ES&S that its pollbooks would work correctly by then either.

“I’m not hearing anything that makes me feel like I would want to bet a substantial chunk of money that this is going to work next time,” County Judge Clay Jenkins said.

Jenkins said he would prepare a court order, similar to a resolution, for the January 7 meeting that would move Dallas County’s pollbook contract to another vendor.

The current $2 million pollbook contract was approved in 2022 and expires next summer.

Dallas County Elections Administrator told commissioners the lack of specificity from ES&S on Tuesday about a repair for the current software version for its pollbooks gives him pause.

“The vendor, ES&S, has to give us a path to fix this problem,” Garcia said. “Right now, there’s no fix on the table so, no, I’m not comfortable.”

ES&S said the problem of screens freezing for a period of time as poll workers check in voters prior to a ballot being printed out, will be resolved in its latest software update.

However, before any software update can be deployed, it has to be tested and certified by the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. That typically happens in July.

Commissioners told ES&S it should have already contacted the secretary of state’s office immediately following the election to set up a time to get a new software version certified.

By law, the county can only use the most current software version certified by the state, which is the one used during the November election.

An ES&S spokesperson told NBC 5 in a statement on Tuesday it is working with Dallas County to ensure its pollbook performance meets the expectations of elections officials and voters.

“Our goal is to ensure that Dallas County can have full faith in the performance of pollbooks for all future elections,” a spokesperson said.

How many future elections remains in doubt.

County Commissioner Elba Garcia told ES&S representatives the Omaha-based company, which provides a variety of election voting equipment to 40 states, took Dallas County for granted.

“And I want you to know that if there is another pollbook that works better, then you guys, my vote will be very fast,” Garcia said.