Published: November 07, 2008 08:05 am      

Short staff causes late night

The high volume of ballots and phone calls to the Johnson County Elections Office on Tuesday prompted County Clerk Curtis Douglas to call for back up, said Patty Bourgeois, election chair assistant.

“Douglas sent four people to help us in the office and answer phones,” Bourgeois said. “With just three of us, we were shorthanded.”

The former election administrator, Cheri Hawkins, resigned a few months ago, but Bourgeois said she does not believe the loss disrupted normal election day procedures.

“Everything went smoothly, and we had no problem with the machine,” she said. “But we had over 50,000 ballots to run through the scanner and had five phone lines going off all day.”

Election staff counted the first vote at about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday and the last vote at about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, Bourgeois said.

People calling the election office were primarily looking for directions to their respective polling locations, she said, or judges were calling to find information for voters who attempted to vote in the wrong precinct.

Bourgeois said a voting canvas with all the details pertaining to the election will be released Nov. 17.

John Fidler, Johnson County Republican Party chairman, said the election process went well. He said he received a call from the county’s Democratic chairwoman, Gayle Ledbetter, about some issues, but once they were addressed, “they turned out to be nonissues,” he said.

“I’m very proud to see us go to an all-Republican county government,” he said.

Ledbetter said the biggest election issue occurred during the primary precinct conventions.

“We were absolutely swamped with people for the precinct conventions,” she said. “In Joshua, 400 people showed up, which was hard for our people who thought they might have one or two.”

As for election night, Ledbetter said she couldn’t be more pleased with the election office staff.

“There are often a few snags in the actual voting process, and there was a delay this time, but that seems to be the norm in Johnson County,” she said. “I have absolutely no complaints about them.”

Ledbetter said she is concerned, however, about the devotion of the county to the Republican Party.

“Texas is basically a lost cause, and the way I see it, Texas is really falling behind the rest of the nation,” she said.