Midland ISD election: Debacle, incompetence & avarice

Pratt on Texas - copyright Pratt on Texas all rights reservedDebacle is the right word to describe the Midland County-run Midland ISD bond election as well as incompetence-on-parade and, for the ISD board of trustees, avarice on display.

The Midland Reporter-Telegram reported: “The box that was discovered during Thursday’s ballot count was opened Monday morning, and it contained 836 ballots from the November general election.

Remember from election night forward, including during two re-counts, there was a more than 800 vote discrepancy between ballots counted and votes shown to be cast. Even with that massive problem, the Midland ISD school board rushed to certify the election after its recount, showing the district’s huge bond-debt issue passing by a handful of votes which was a reversal of the tally after election night and the later counting of mail-in and -provisional ballots.

The board that hires and fires the county election official, Deborah Land, is set to meet to Friday to discuss her employment.

…she sees preventable errors as just mistakes when in reality the big failure is designing systems that anticipate and prevent such glaring errors.

“When asked if she was shocked that a new ballot box was discovered the same day the Elections Office was conducting a public ballot count, Midland County Elections Administrator Deborah Land said, “This whole thing has been one in a million” and the community should “just chalk that up to another ‘Oh, my, now what?’ kinda thing,” reported the Midland Reporter-Telegram.

The comment alone demonstrates Ms. Land’s incompetence because it shows she doesn’t understand that it is a lack of good work systems that allowed the box to be missing after the first moment a discrepancy was discovered. Like many, she sees preventable errors as just mistakes when in reality the big failure is designing systems that anticipate and prevent such glaring errors.

 

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