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‘Clerical error’: Harris County DA told her ballot had already been cast when she tried to vote in her race

March 6, 2024 | | Print Article

A Texas district attorney who was unseated in the Democrat primary on Tuesday reportedly had issues when casting her own ballot.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg conceded to Sean Teare, a former prosecutor in her office, on Tuesday night. But earlier in the day, Ogg was “raising alarms about voting procedures there after she was turned away from the polls early Tuesday morning because her ballot had already been cast,” CNN reported.

“Ogg, whose name is on Tuesday’s primary ballot, successfully voted later Tuesday, but she told CNN that the incident raises questions about how it happened in the first place, whether similar mistakes have affected voters in the same household and whether local election officials have a system to track such errors,” CNN noted.

Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth explained what happened in a news conference.

She also explained in a statement posted on X that when “qualifying a voter” during the check-in process, “each voter is asked to review and confirm the information that appears on the iPad screen, including the voter’s name. If the information that appears on the screen is not accurate, the voter must notify the election clerk.”

It seems Ogg’s partner, Olivia Jordan, cast a ballot in Ogg’s name during early voting last week and evidently “must not have noticed the information was not hers,” according to the statement.

“The entire reason that we have election judges and poll workers is to prevent voter fraud, so checking the ID against the person who is voting and against the rolls is entirely the job of the clerk,” Ogg told CNN. “I was shocked when they pushed it back on the voter.”

“My partner wasn’t trying to commit fraud,” Ogg said. “She was just trying to vote.”

The DA returned to her polling place to vote at noon once the issue was resolved, after spending more than an hour early Tuesday morning trying to cast her ballot.

According to CNN:

The incident comes as the county – a Democratic stronghold that includes Houston – remains under scrutiny from Republican state officials. Just last year, the county’s election office was dismantled and its responsibilities shifted to the county clerk and county tax assessor-collector under a law approved by the GOP-controlled state Legislature. A separate statute gave the state the power to order “administrative oversight” of the county’s election administration if there’s evidence of recurring problems.

 

While Ogg went on to lose the primary race, she lamented the problem occurred and that it may not be the first or only incident of its kind.

“I’m the top law enforcement official in the third-biggest jurisdiction in the nation,” Ogg told CNN in a phone interview. “If it can happen to the district attorney, it can happen to anyone.”

Social media users concurred, reminding again of the value of voter identification.

Frieda Powers
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