Harris County, Texas Voting Machines Destroyed By Arson
The fire destroyed 10,000 pieces of equipment, including voting machines and devices called judge’s booth controllers that dispense four-digit access codes to voters and serve as mobile ballot boxes to tabulate the count at the end of Election Day.
A fire that destroyed nearly all Harris County’s electronic voting machines Friday 08-27-2010 has election officials scrambling to re-equip the county for an election in which early voting starts in just 51 days.
Even before the pre-dawn fire was out, County Clerk Beverly Kaufman pledged to hold a “timely election” on Nov. 2 but suggested the county may have to run fewer than its planned 739 Election Day polling stations if it cannot find enough machines.
Because she does not know how many machines will be available for each polling location, Kaufman started appealing almost immediately to voters to cast their ballots early to help avoid long lines on Election Day.
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