Tarrant County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia said the electronic scanners rejected thousands of mail in ballots because it was unable to read the barcodes.
“We scan the ballots in and the scanner says ‘I don’t identify these documents’ when the scanner doesn’t see the barcode it might as well have been a newspaper you scanned, just not a ballot,” said Garcia.
Garcia says the ballot board will create copies and then scan those copies properly to make sure the ballots are counted.
“This process is outlined in the law,” he said. “It’s also used when, for example, if someone is eating breakfast and damages the ballot and mails it in. Their vote is there and this process is defined to protect the integrity of the ballot,” he said.
He said this is common with ballots even from overseas, but not this many. “It’s certainly a lot more volume than expected, usually the board makes hundreds of remakes but now we are talking about tens of thousands of ballots if the rate stays this way,” said Garcia.
Garcia says however, he believes they have the time and resources to get this done before Election Night.
He said voters who have not returned mail in ballots can still do so and their ballots will be copied and counted. Also, if voters wish, they can bring their mail-in ballots with them to the polls and surrender the ballot there to vote in person.