During the 2022 general election, scores of polling places in Harris County, the most populous in Texas, reported shortages of ballot paper, resulting in voters’ being turned away.
The failure to properly distribute ballot paper on Election Day prompted several lawsuits and challenges as Republicans accused Democratic county officials of shortchanging Republican polling places in an attempt to sway the results.
But the actual reason for the problems with ballot paper was much more banal, a Texas Rangers investigation found: An employee with a key role in determining paper distribution neglected his duties because he had been working a second full-time job without approval.
“The result is he didn’t do his job for Harris County,” the district attorney, Kim Ogg, said at a news conference on Tuesday.
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Ms. Ogg, a Democrat who lost her primary in the spring and recently crossed party lines to endorse Republican Senator Ted Cruz for re-election in November, said the investigation had found no political motivation behind the supply problems.
Instead, investigators said, the employee had simply done his job without much care, distributing roughly the same amount of ballot paper to the vast majority of polling locations, instead of taking into account voting patterns and sending more paper to higher-turnout locations.
