For 20 years, the Orange County Elections Administration Office has been using the same spread sheet form to report daily early voting totals for a wide variety of elections. This week, people began calling the office to question the mail-in ballots.
Early voting started Monday on a referendum to create an Orange County hospital district.
Elections Administrator Tina Barrow said the first day the office reported 529 mail-in ballots. She said those ballots had come to the office before early voting began. The number of mail-in votes was counted that first day and reported on the spread sheet. The second day 84 mail-in votes were delivered and on the third 49 ballots were received by mail.
Barrow said no one has called about the mail-in reporting on the spread sheet before.
The markings ‘for’ or ‘against’ on the mail-in ballots will not be counted until election day, December 19.
At the end of Thursday and four days of early voting, a total of 3191 ballots had been cast. Those include a total of 693 by mail, 2496 in person and two from out of the country.
The Orange box has 729 votes with 164 on Thursday. Bridge City has 708 votes with 120 on Thursday. Vidor has 803 votes with 182 on Wednesday. Mauriceville has 256 votes with 52 on Wednesday.
Early voting hours on Friday will be 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Orange Public Library, Bridge City Public Works Building, Vidor ISD administration building, and Mauriceville Volunteer Fire Department. Registered Orange County voters may go to any of the early voting boxes.
Early voting will begin again on Monday and run through Friday, December 15.
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