Investigation urges better 'attention to detail,' training for Houston City Clerk following election errors

What you need to know:

• Officials responsible for administering Houston's elections need to pay more attention to detail and learn the city’s election laws, according to a memo from the city attorney’s office following an investigation requested by Mayor Carter Cole.
• City Clerk Tani Weiber Schoneman and her staff were responsible for three election errors due to misunderstandings and oversights, the memo states. A misprinted ballot was caused by a coder or printer error but could have been caught by Schoneman before the election, it states. Other issues were attributed to misunderstandings or process hiccups.
• Cole said he plans to work with the clerk to rewrite the city's election code to help prevent future errors.

HOUSTON — Officials responsible for administering Houston's elections need to pay more attention to detail and learn the city’s election laws, according to a memo from the city attorney’s office following an investigation requested by Mayor Carter Cole.

"My recommendation is that there needs to be much greater attention to detail by the clerk’s office, as well as more in-depth knowledge of the Houston Municipal Code and municipal election processes,” the memo, sent to Cole on Monday on behalf of City Attorney Joseph Levesque, said.

Houston's Oct. 1 City Council election was overshadowed by a series of irregularities flagged by citizens and council members, including a ballot error, failure to post election notices, missing signatures on official tally sheets, and typos on post-election certification documents.

The Houston City Council voted 5-2 last week to certify the election results despite the errors, with council members Lisa Johansen and Sandy McDonald opposed.

The four-page memo details four election errors, including misprinted ballots, and four misunderstandings or election process hiccups. Three of the errors were caused by misunderstandings or oversights by City Clerk Tani Weiber Schoneman or her staff, the investigation found, while the misprinted ballot was caused by a printer or coder error but could have been caught by Schoneman before Election Day, the memo states.

The investigation was conducted for Levesque by paralegal BJ Carlson, who also wrote the memo.

The findings detailed in the memo are accurate, Schoneman said in an interview Tuesday.

“It’s very transparent. The information in it is correct and needs to be provided to the public,” she said.

The investigation found that a ballot error that incorrectly listed the term length for Council Seat G as three years instead of one was the fault of the ballot coder or printer, not Schoneman. Still, Schoneman could have flagged the problem, the memo states.

“It is unfortunate that the clerk’s office did not catch this error prior to the start of voting,” the memo states.

In cities that use voting machines, ballot information is first provided to the machine company for encoding and then sent for printing, according to an official with Homer-based Print Works, which creates ballots for communities across Alaska. Print Works cannot alter the files, which are received in PDF format, the official said.

Houston's information was correct when it was sent to Dominion Voting for coding in late August, according to an email included in the investigation and attached to the memo. It was sent directly from Dominion to the printer, Schoneman said Tuesday.

“Due to the short time frame for preparing this report, I was unable to determine where the ballot length error occurred between Dominion Voting and the ballot publishers,” the memo states.

In the months leading up to the election, Schoneman failed to properly publish election notices in a local newspaper as required by city law, the investigation found. She had previously correctly published a separate candidate notice that contained similar information and did not know she needed to publish the second notice, the memo says.

"Clerk Schoneman said it did not occur to her to publish separate notices," the memo said.

After the election, an input error on an official data sheet submitted to the council as part of the certification process and conflicting numbers on two separate tally sheets were caused by a discrepancy between the clerk's records and information produced by the voting machines, not by Schoneman, the memo said. However, Schoneman could have corrected the problem, the investigation found.

“Our office had discussions with Mayor Cole and Clerk Schoneman regarding corrections needed to the unofficial results information when preparing the official results documentation in order to correctly report the voting information,” the memo states.

While the investigation found that Schoneman experienced early problems securing volunteers for the city's canvassing board and that signatures were missing from official final count documents, the memo does not characterize those irregularities as errors.

An official canvass board document submitted to the City Council as part of the certification process contained three signatures from canvass board officials, with a signature line for a fourth official and a canvass board observer left blank, the memo notes.

Houston city law requires only three canvass board officials and does not include a timeline for their appointment.

“One canvass board member was unable to attend the canvass board meeting. Also, the canvass board observer was seated in the audience, away from the canvass board,” the memo states. “Clerk Schoneman explained that she had difficulty finding election officials, as some people she contacted had moved out of state.”

The investigation also examined two post-election process issues.

An official letter filed with the city by write-in candidate Callie Courtney, which officials initially interpreted as contesting the entire election, was later reclassified as a recount request following a conversation between Levesque and Courtney's attorney, Eric Conard, the memo states. Courtney's request was ultimately dropped, in part because of the cost of the recount. She narrowly lost the race for Seat G to incumbent Laurie Fabuert by a vote of 133-131.

Alaska State Liaison Patricia Sullivan, whose region includes Houston, last week raised concerns with Cole and council member and Deputy Mayor David Childs that the council had not been properly informed of all the election issues that had been flagged. That was an issue the investigation sought to remedy, the memo said.

“This memorandum is intended to provide a report to the City Council regarding the election concerns,” it states.

Sullivan had not received a copy of the memo as of Tuesday morning, she said in an email.

Cole said he requested the investigation so members of the public can understand what went wrong and how it can be corrected in future elections. He plans to work with the clerk this year to rewrite the city’s election code and procedures to make the process clearer and easier to administer.

“The only reason I have this at all is to help folks get it straight and get it right because our government will not work otherwise,” Cole said.

— Contact Amy Bushatz at abushatz@matsusentinel.com