Voters in Hopkins County weren’t able to cast ballots today until after 9 a.m., as a result of a technical problem with the voting machines, the Hopkins County Clerk’s Office said.
“It was a vendor issue,” Hopkins County Chief Deputy Clerk Leslie Cannon said. “We got all the machines up and running about 15-20 minutes ago,” Cannon said at about 9:40 a.m. Tuesday.
Hopkins County is operating 12 polling locations in this year’s general election, including seven in Sulphur Springs, and one each in Como, Cumby, Miller Grove, Saltillo, and Sulphur Bluff.
Hopkins County was one of an unknown number of Texas counties that experienced problems with KnowInk voting machines, Cannon said. KnowInk, based in St. Louis, manufactures the Poll Pad electronic pollbook, which is used in 26 states as well as the District of Columbia, according to the company’s website.
Hopkins County polls are scheduled to remain open until 7 p.m.
Elsewhere in East Texas, in Upshur County, voters will have until 8 p.m. tonight to cast their ballots, after a state district judge extended poll hours because of a roughly 90-minute delay in getting voting started, according to The Texas Tribune.
Officials told The Texas Tribune the delay was the result of “polling equipment technical issues.”
A spokesperson for the Texas secretary of state’s office, Stephen Chang, told The Texas Tribune the problem “was connectivity issues with their KnowInk e-poll books.” It had been resolved by mid-morning, he said, and voting had resumed.
A “limited” number of other Texas counties reported a similar problems to the secretary of state’s office Tuesday morning, Chang said. Those too had been fixed, he said.
This story was edited at 12:00 p.m. to include details about Upshur County.
