The Potter County Commissioners’ Court met on the morning of November 17th to canvas the results of the midterm election. During the meeting, Elections Administrator Melynn Huntley exaggerated the county’s transparency regarding an error that occurred with voting systems during early voting.

Th error in question was described by Huntley during the meeting:

“We had it printing the name of a candidate that was in the primary, when people voted for Evan Young, who was the actual candidate. It was tabulating for Evan Young.”

Huntley then talked about a call she had with the Secretary of State’s Advisory Council meeting, where she claimed other unnamed counties experienced similar problems.

“Yesterday, when I was on a call with the Secretary of State’s Advisory Council meeting, I shared what happened to us, and, what I heard was, oh, that happened to us, and it happened to us, and it happened to us. I happened to be the only person who was transparent about it with the public. So, it has happened all over, and it has happened in other places, some of them caught it prior to launching it, but nobody had said anything. Still no excuse, we still missed it.”

The Amarillo Pioneer has reached out to the Secretary of State to seek verification as to whether or not the claim that other counties experienced similar issues was true. As of writing, we have not received a response. However, the claim that Huntley “was transparent about it with the public” appears to be a major exaggeration. Upon discovering the issue, the Huntley released the following cryptic press release:

It has come to our attention that the printed vote record for Justice, Texas Supreme Court Place 9, was incorrect. This was a human error that did not affect the tallying of ballots. We thank the voter who noticed this. The issue has been resolved and we want to assure voters that this did not alter the counting of votes for any candidate in the election.

This press release was sent directly to local media organizations and was not posted to any Potter County websites. It appears other communications to the public since have also been indirect, primarily through media interviews.