A partial primary election ballot hand count, required by the Secretary of State’s Office, is underway in Burnet County this week, as officials assess one of its highest turnouts.
Mike Evans, Burnet County Elections Administrator said starting March 9, election officials launched a partial manual hand count expected to be complete by the end of this week.
“We have 21 days after election day to have it complete,” Evans said.
Another aspect of the election, the first one in Burnet County for newly appointed elections leadership, involved an approximate 31% voter turnout. The number of registered voters is approximately 40,000; there were 12,585 total votes, Evans confirmed.
“Looking at the history it appears to be pretty high for the primary,” he said.
Partial Hand Count
Turning his attention to the state-mandated hand count, he offered details about what that entails.
“(The count involves) three early voting and three election day polling locations and then all the mail-in ballots,” he told “They wanted a percentage (of mail in ballots) but we’re doing all of them,” he added. “There were over 500 mail-in ballots.”
The races designated for the local count are U.S. Senator, state attorney general and Burnet County judge.
In a random drawing, local election officials will count early voting ballots from the three of the four early voting centers: AgriLife, Bertram Community Center and Granite Shoals Community Center.
Election Day ballots to count will be compiled from the Texas Tech polling site in Marble Falls, Briggs Fire Hall and the AgriLife building in Burnet.
Overall Process
Shortly after election day, local election officials assessed that overall “streamlined” checkins in Burnet County worked well this election with room for additional improvement.
Evans lauded an “efficient process” but expects to re-visit “training” in handling equipment such as the method to properly “seat voting tablets into cradles to ensure proper battery connection.”
Evans added improvements will involve maintaining a good “point of contact” information sheet for the polling locations. That process guarantees assessments of delivery and pickup of devices and other voting process equipment.
“We need to tighten up our training quite a bit. We had a lot of questions coming in. We had one poll worker who left the scanner out in Briggs and we had to go back and get it about 9 on election night,” Evans said. “That’s where we receive information for our votes. The location was locked, everything was sealed. They brought the wrong machine in.
That’s training.”
Election officials utilized a member of law enforcement to escort them to the location, locate the device and bring it back to the tally location.
On Election Day, Burnet County opened 12 (of 24-25) voting locations in which voters could cast their ballots at any one of the locations.
“We had a little bit of backup on Election Day - about a 45-minute wait; or an hour at AgriLife (in Burnet),” he said. “It was just sheer volume. People waiting until the last minute to vote.”
About 100 people were in line when the polls closed at the AgriLife Building.
“Those folks did cast their ballots,” Evans added. “7 o’clock - if you’re in line, come in.”
The two most brisk sites were in Burnet and Marble Falls. Texas Tech voted 2,693; on Election Day 1,106 voted at that Marble Falls location. For Burnet’s AgriLife building, early ballots cast totaled 3,132, and on Election Day in Burnet, 974 people voted.
As the count continues, election officials have turned their attention to preparing for two elections in May.
On Saturday, May 2, local school and city elections are scheduled. On May 26, voters throughout the Lone Star State will go to the polls for the primary runoff election.
