Hoping to learn from recent mistakes and quell any doubts about the integrity of Dallas County’s election process, the four-person, bipartisan general election review commission appointed by the board of supervisors met Wednesday morning at the county elections office in Adel to look into the glitch that caused nearly 5,000 absentee votes to go unreported in the 2016 general election.
Dallas County Auditor Julia Helm and Deputy Auditor Kim Owen walked the commissioners through the election-day process of counting, tabulating and reporting votes, demonstrating the software and hardware used and explaining how it happened that absentee ballots were all counted and tabulated just fine, but some were omitted from the report uploaded to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office.
Some technicalities of the election software were also explained by Christy Wilson, project manager with RBM Consulting, the Chicago-based vendor that provides Dallas County’s election software system.
The process of counting votes is complex, and the four election review commissioners — Dawn Van Buren, Republican chair of the Absentee Special Voters Precinct Board; Michael Cooper, Democratic chair of the Absentee Special Voters Precinct Board; John Strathman, co-chair of the Dallas County Republican Party; and Art Behn, chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party — peppered Helm, Owen and Wilson with questions over the course of the 75-minute meeting.
Also attending was Dawn Williams, director of elections in the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, who answered question about the state-level reporting process. Williams is the former Marshall County Auditor, where she oversaw elections using the same machines and software system used in Dallas County elections.
Williams said the Secretary of State’s office has not encountered this particular error before. As a consequence, the secretary issued a technical infraction to the Dallas County Auditor’s office, “which is basically just a written reprimand,” according Kevin Hall, the secretary’s communication director.
Helm explained to the supervisors Tuesday what the election review commissioners would do Wednesday.
“They’ll review all the documents and our software,” she said. “We’ll be going into the central count and looking at that, and we’ll be reporting back to you next week everything that went on during this commission.”
The review revealed one error occurred the night of the general election, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. The error will be familiar to anyone who has experienced a similar happening when selecting a number of electronic files to move from one place to another or when selecting multiple emails to move or delete. It boils down to selecting only some of the files when you meant to select all.
There was a week-long window open to catch the error between election night and the following Tuesday, when the board of supervisors officially certified the county canvas. The discrepancy between the true number of absentee ballots counted and the false number erroneously reported to the state was not noticed during the reconciliation prior to the county’s official certification.
There are other intricacies in the process that interested readers can pursue once the commission’s report is final.
“I know that you’ll probably be getting a lot of information thrown at you today,” Helm said to the commissioners, “but I’d like to get your first thoughts about recommendations to help us correct this process. Of course, any recommendations you have tomorrow, the next day, we’d love to hear that. I have some of my own recommendations since I’ve been kind of walked through the process, too, that I’m going to also give to the board of supervisors as part of all this.”
Near the end of the meeting, General Election Review Commissioner Dawn Van Buren, the Republican chair of the Absentee Special Voters Precinct Board and an election volunteer, Commissioner Dawn Van Buren made a general statement.
“I worked for IBM for 25 years,” Van Buren said. “I worked elections in Dallas, Texas, for 15 years, and I’ve worked here since 2006, when we moved to Adel. I have never worked in a more professional environment than this office is. They are very dedicated to their job. They are very cautious about what they do. They’re very strict with the volunteers. We don’t come in here and horse around. There is no way this was anything but a human error. They’re very, very professional. I’ve been very impressed because if I was not impressed with their professionalism, I would not be volunteering here. And I would just like for that to be understood.”
Not all critics have been so kind since the error surfaced early in February. Democrat activist and Iowa Starting Line blogger Pat Rynard, for instance, said the incident revealed “rank incompetence” in the county’s election office that “ought to lead to the firing of election officials and the resignation of their county auditor.”
As long as Helm “remains in office, Dallas County voters simply cannot trust that their votes will be counted,” Rynard said.
Asked her reaction to Rynard’s call, Helm said she has no intention of resigning her office.
“I’m not going to resign,” she said Tuesday. “I’m going to fix the problem.”
Helm was the county precinct election coordinator during the 2016 general election, but she was also running for the auditor’s office and so was a candidate on the ballot. For this reason, she recused herself from all election-related activities.
“Since my name was on the ballot, I purposely stayed away from any absentee balloting and other tabulation,” Helm told the commission Wednesday. “But I am still deeply, deeply sorry that this mistake happened and now that I am auditor, I want to start the correction process right, so that’s why I asked the board of supervisors to convene our general election review commission. It is not a requirement, but I feel it is really necessary and important.”
Dallas County Board of Supervisors Chair Kim Chapman dismissed as “ridiculous” Rynard’s call for Helm’s resignation.
“I think it’s good you’re putting this group together and opening it up to the public,” Chapman said to Helm Tuesday. “There’s nothing mandatory about any of this. You doing it to try to be transparent to the public.”
Dallas County Attorney Wayne Reisetter said the commission’s civil review of the election would not hamper any criminal investigation of the election because there would be no criminal investigation.
“Sometimes when there is a civil review of something and the possibility of a criminal matter, there is some concern about the civil matter opening things up that would impede a criminal review,” Reisetter told the supervisors Tuesday. “I have undertaken the interview of witnesses in this and, at this point anyway, I find no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing, so this would not impede any criminal investigation.”
Williams, the state elections director visiting from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, said the Dallas County Auditor’s office was “professional and cooperative” throughout the process. “They have taken a great first step toward rebuilding trust by consistently demonstrating a balanced and open approach to correct the public record, as evidenced by the activities of this commission,” Williams said.
While the official totals for Dallas County votes in the 2016 general election will always reflect the error, Helm said the commission’s proceedings will be documented and presented to the board of supervisors to receive and file and so become a supplement to the official record.
Somewhere along the line, this should have been caught before it got to state level! Dallas County has to step up and take the blame, then fix the problem for future elections.