Concerned citizens appeared before Smith County’s Commissioners Court on Tuesday morning to express their feelings about what they allege was a lack of voter integrity regarding the 2020 presidential election.
“There was a lot of inconsistency,” said JoAnne Fleming, executive director of Grassroots America We The People.
Fleming cited issues that were found after an extensive investigation launched in May by Grassroots and Texas Voter Verification. After interviewing voters in the county and reviewing results and records, findings revealed chain of command issues, inaccurate or missing logs, and improper procedures.
“You know and I know that there’s been a lot of ridicule levied against people who question election results,” Fleming said. “Well, it is unfair. It is a low point of intellectual integrity to make comments on something about which you don’t know the facts.”
Fleming said the investigation was a fact-finding mission to help the county, and noted that the county had ‘numerous issues with elections’ prior to Michelle Allcon coming on board as election administrator in June 2021. She thanked Allcon for her work in establishing accountability and transparency in the elections office during her tenure so far.
“I will say we are happy with the progress that has been made,” she said. “However, it does not in any way… excuse the mistakes, the slipshod way in which elections have been handled in this county in the past.”
Fleming said this is not a partisan issue.
“I don’t care if someone is a member of the Democrat party, the Republican Party, the Green Party, [or] the Neptune Party. If you are legal, if you are an American citizen and you are legally eligible to vote in these United States, your vote should count,” Fleming said.
She asked how many votes it would take to take away that right: “Just one.”
Fleming summarized the issues with records management and chain of control of the 2020 election process in the county, stating that the review showed provisional ballots, military overseas ballots logs were missing, incomplete, missing and inaccurate.
“The record boxes were an embarrassment,” she said. “Smith County has a slogan striving for excellence. This was not excellent.”
Based on the investigation by the election integrity team, the county had 584 more absentee voters than absentee ballots.
“That should appall, and even make angry, everyone in this room,” Fleming said to those gathered in the commissioners courtroom. “But it should compel us to make sure this never happens again.”
Fleming said the team focused on absentee voters because of the physical paper records to audit. Fleming said the same problems existed with in-person voters, but the machine records were either unavailable or not auditable.
”Who knows the magnitude of those problems?” she said.
Fleming said Smith County is not unique in seeing these discrepancies, but the county is in fact unique in one way: the government’s willingness to answer questions and cooperate amid the investigation.
She said Grassroots and a statewide team are working with the legislature to fix these problems. She said the goal is to get the state to issue standardization for the election process for all 254 counties.
Allcon said in May, Grassroots America and Texas Voter Verification informed Smith County of their intentions to review the 2020 presidential election on suspicions that votes were allegedly not counted.
According to Allcon, Grassroots America interviewed hundreds of voters of different parties throughout the county then requested access to voter records, election records to confirm or discount the interviews conducted.
“The records that were not sealed for preservation were reviewed in July, then the ones that were sealed for preservation were reviewed in September,” Allcon said.
Allcon stated the review team found issues to residency, district assignments and “sloppy election record,” filing and storage, as well as missing records.
Multiple residents spoke at the meeting to discuss how the review determined their votes did not count. Although she was not in the elections office at that time to know for a fact, Allcon said she believes it’s likely these ballots were counted, but not logged, “which means the voter has no way of knowing that their vote got counted.“
According to Allcon, there were several issues that stemmed from the pandemic that changed the way people were voting during the 2020 presidential election, such as extended early voting and being able to drop off absentee ballots throughout the entirety of the election rather than on a single day.
“All of that made an impact on what should have been procedures that the county implemented,” Allcon said. “But it doesn’t appear that the procedures were actually followed consistently.”
There were also logistical issues such as where the mail ballots were accepted in a separate building than where they were actually processed, Allcon said.
The uploads to the state do not appear to be made in a consistent or timely manner, Allcon added.
Limited and provisional ballots were either logged incorrectly or logs are missing, creating inaccuracies in the report of roughly 700 when it comes to the tally of total ballots. This is a major issue in itself because the list of voters who voted versus total number of ballots counted, she said.
Some absentee ballots could have been miscategorized as early voting or Election Day ballots instead, Allcon said according to the team’s review.
She also stated the review team opened ballot boxes as part of the investigation and found some boxes were inaccurately labeled in regards to their contents. One team member reported, “it looked like things were just dumped in” the boxes, Allcon said.
Allcon, who was not in her current position during the 2020 election, said she believes these issues can be attributed to a few factors. Of those, lack of organization and detail management on the staff at the time; jot enough staff members to handle an election of that size;
”The underlying issue with what we saw really appeared to be lack of interest on the part of the staff. It’s like they didn’t care,” Allcon said.
The entire elections office staff is new, Allcon said, since 2020, and the new employees are very “attention detailed” and most of the issues cited in the review have already been rectified with procedure changes. However, she said it is a continual effort to ensure voter integrity and voter confidence is protected.
After this review, the elections office has already implemented some changes including targeted training for election workers and part-time staff in regards to the limited and provisional ballots and record-keeping of those.
“Record keeping … is a continual change in my office,” Allcon said.
Grassroots and Texas Voter Verification have requested a similar review of the 2022 gubernatorial election to see if changes implemented reflect positive change on the elections process. Allcon said her team is open to this in order to ensure all voters in Smith County understand the office is working hard to make sure the elections process is fair and operates as it is intended to. It would also help verify if changes made since the 2020 election have been effective.
In other matters, the court approved to conduct various elections throughout Smith County for the following political subdivisions:
Smith County Emergency Services District 1
City of Bullard
City of Lindale
Arp ISD
Troup ISD
Whitehouse ISD
Winona ISD
“These are just the start,” Allcon said. “These are the contracts we’ve gotten so far. We still have some outstanding contracts.”
According to Allcon, the subdivisions have already ordered their elections and signed an agreement with Allcon to run their respective elections, which could be anything from a special election to a trustee election to city council members election.
In mid-February, the filing period for the candidates will end and the political subdivisions will know for sure as to whether elections will actually be held, Allcon said.
“We will have to start moving quickly to get everything on ballots.”
The process of preparing for the elections will include formatting the ballots then laid out and proofed in enough time to produce sample ballots for the elections.
