As it was determined after review that Velvet Cardona was unable to run for District B of the Levelland City Council Election in May, the discrepancy of holding a voter registration card labeled District B, but being having physical property located in District A was brought to attention.
Hockley County Elections Administrator Jody Rose explained that the error was noticed in preparing for the upcoming election and described the process in which it was addressed.
Through the process of running for any form of elected or appointed position, the individual running for the position must file their application.
For the city council election, the election’s office is not the filing authority of the election, it is the city staff or mainly the city secretary.
Through the application process, once the proper documents are turned in, the city secretary will get in contact with the elections office administrator and verify if the applicant is a registered voter.
Rose added that the city secretary did follow the mentioned process in a timely manner and moving forward in the process, the Secretary of States Office stated that the first check on an applicant must be done within five days which at that point the Cardona was eligible to run.
After discussion with the states office, the elections office was informed that the first step was done correctly, however; a second step is also part of the process which double checks everything up until that point.
Rose explained that is was during that step that he noticed an error while preparing for the election that there were several blocks affecting District B and the error had been ongoing for several years dating back into the early 2000’s. Once the issue was realized, Rose physically drove that particular neighborhood to make sure the error would be resolved effectively.
For Cardona, the physical location of her property is located in District A but it is right on the line next to District B.
With the error, there were several other addresses that had been grouped together that belonged in District A, but had voting with District B.
As of Monday, Rose says those errors have been corrected and when it comes to correcting issues such as that, there is a twostep process that includes Rose adjusting his system to accommodate the change and finally the secretary of state taking care of the final steps to ensure the issue is corrected.
Once that is corrected, the individual being adjusted will receive a new voter registration card. Rose also added that Cardona should be receiving her new card by the beginning of the week or by mid-week at the latest.
After discussing with the secretary of states office in determining why the error was caused, it was determined the issue was created through the process of following the state law.
To ensure that the same issue does not repeat itself, Rose has been going through the district boundaries for city council districts to ensure everything lines up along side the software and the boundaries. Additionally, the elections office and the state’s office are working to see if there are any additional steps that need to be implemented to mitigate and future issues.
For now Rose has been informed that they have followed and done everything they could do along side the state’s office to correct everything prior to the upcoming election.