From the inbox:
On Monday, Sept. 20 at 11 a.m., Harris County received the first of what will be several shipments of election equipment from counties across Texas. The delivery begins the gradual gathering of equipment needed to conduct the Nov. 2nd election in Harris County. In the wake of the fire which destroyed the County’s election equipment, County Clerk Beverly Kaufman formulated a plan to conduct the County’s election utilizing purchased and loaned election equipment.
“I’m pleased to report that colleagues across the state have responded to the call for assistance,” said Kaufman, chief elections officer of the county. “And, I ‘m very thankful that the loaned and purchased equipment may enable a distribution at the 736 Election Day polling locations which meets the Texas Administrative Code (TAC) allocation formula.” The County Clerk anticipates having 5,300 direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines for Election Day.
According to Clerk Kaufman, the TAC Election Day allocation formula requires a poll to have two DREs for fewer than 300 voters, four for 301 to 600 voters, six for 601 to 900 voters and two for each additional 300 voters. On Election Day, the County Clerk expects to deploy no less than 4 and no more than 11 voting machines per a poll with paper ballots as a back-up.
The first batch of election equipment which totals 875 pieces comes from Ft. Bend and Tarrant County. Harris County has accepted assistance offers from 14 counties and one city. Together, the assisting counties are providing 2,146 pieces of electronic voting equipment and accessories, including 399 Judges Booth Controllers (JBC) 1,104 eSlates with booths and 278 Disabled Access Units with booths. Additionally, counties are providing 4,056 booths, 1,675 ballot boxes with accompanying locks and keys.
At this point, the assisting entities include Bexer, Brazoria, Comal, Dallas, Denton, Ft. Bend, Galveston, Gregg, Grimes, Jefferson, Lubbock, Montgomery, Travis, Tarrant and Wharton County, the City of Friendswood, and Arapahoe County in Colorado.
Good to have friends, obviously. Here’s hoping everything else goes off smoothly.