MIDLAND, Texas — All eyes are on Midland County and its ballots.
Thursday, county leaders hope to know where and how the recount committee came up 820 ballots short.
Here's how the ballot count will work:
Starting at 9 a.m., the Midland County Elections Administrator will unseal each of the ballot boxes used in the November election.
Every ballot inside of the boxes will run through a DS450 scanner.
The machine is manufactured by ES&S, the same company that made the county’s new voting machines.
The DS450 machine will only count the number of ballots. The county also plans to hand-count each of the ballots.
As per the court order, any stray document or tally sheets found in ballot boxes will be put into sealed-confidential folders.
The county will compare ballot totals with the machine and recount committee totals.
Elections Administrator Deborah Land believes the machines have given the right total all along.
“I have faith in those machines,” she said. “I believe the issue is with the recount committee. They were in that room for a long time and were very tired. It’s likely they could have made an error.”
County Attorney Russell Malm stated earlier in the week that their investigation narrowed the ballot discrepancy down to the early voting center inside of the Midland County Annex.
Officials found a discrepancy while reviewing tally sheets for that particular voting center.
“At this point, we still don’t know how or why that discrepancy occurred,” Malm said. “Our next step is to figure that out.”
The process, open to the public, starts at 9 a.m. inside the Commissioners Court inside the county annex.
The process will be live-streamed on NewsWest9.com.
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