Interim Fort Bend County Judge Daniel Wong on Tuesday ordered a “thorough investigation” after an Election Day software error temporarily disrupted voter check-ins across the county during the primary runoff election.
Wong addressed the issue during a 6 p.m. press conference alongside Fort Bend County Elections Administrator Chase Wilson and local party officials.
According to county officials, the issue began around 2:30 p.m. when polling locations across the county reported that some voters could not check in using electronic poll books.
Wilson said the problem stemmed from a clerical error involving the upload of an incorrect voter database file.
“The incorrect file was chosen and uploaded into the system,” Wilson said. “That file was unfortunately uploaded to our primary runoff database.”
Wilson said the file used came from the county’s May 2 city and school election, causing electronic poll book check-in tablets to refuse some voters at polling locations countywide.
County officials said election staff immediately contacted the vendor and implemented a fix shortly after 5 p.m.
“I’m pleased to say the vendor successfully transmitted an upload to polling machines shortly after 5:00 p.m. and voters should now be able to vote normally without issue,” Wong said.
Wong emphasized multiple times during the press conference that the issue did not compromise election security or vote counting.
“At no time was there any concern regarding election integrity, vote tabulation or the security of the election process,” Wong said. “This issue was administrative in nature and related solely to the incorrect file upload. It did not impact the integrity or accuracy of ballots cast.”
Officials said provisional ballots remained available throughout the disruption for voters unable to check in electronically.
Wilson said some voters were still able to cast ballots during the outage, while others voted provisionally based on guidance from the Texas Secretary of State’s office.
The incident quickly prompted discussion about whether polling hours should be extended.
Greg Barnes, chair of the Fort Bend County Republican Party, called for additional voting hours, saying the malfunction further damaged public confidence in elections.
“The public is already very skeptical of our voting system, and today’s software update failure that took down the voter check-in system has only increased those concerns,” Barnes said.
Barnes said Texas law requires both major political parties to jointly seek a court order extending voting hours.
“Unfortunately, the Democrat Party chair would not agree to move forward with extending voting hours,” Barnes said. “I don’t believe voters should be penalized because of failures in the election system outside of their control.”
Wong said he did not have authority to independently extend voting hours during a primary election.
Democratic Party officials defended the decision not to pursue an extension, arguing ballots cast after 7 p.m. would likely be invalidated under prior Texas Supreme Court rulings.
In a statement posted online, Mohammad Usman ‘Jazz’ Aijaz said Democratic officials consulted with legal counsel and concluded extending hours could create confusion and give voters “the illusion that your vote will count” if they entered a polling place after the statutory deadline.
“Consensus was that any ballot cast after 7:00PM will be invalidated,” Aijaz said in the statement, citing past Texas Supreme Court rulings. Aijaz said that over the past 15 years, courts have consistently rejected ballots cast after the statutory 7 p.m. deadline in cases where voting hours were extended by court order, with the exception of temporary pandemic-era changes authorized by the governor during COVID-19.
Aijaz added that voters already in line by 7 p.m. would still have their ballots counted, regardless of how long voting took afterward.
County officials did not immediately release how many voters were affected by the outage. Wong said the county would conduct a full review of the incident.