DALLAS - Dallas County Commissioners want to know why potentially thousands of cards notifying voters of changes to their polling locations didn't reach them before the election.
Dallas County intended to mail almost 340,000 cards informing voters of a different polling location for the election that was held two weeks ago, but not all of cards arrived in time.
Commissioner John Wiley Price said he was furious upon learning about what happened.
"These folks got jacked and I'm trying to find out what the hell happened," he said.
The elections department combined precinct voting locations to save money and wanted to send out cards notifying voters of the change a week before election day.
Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet said the Hurst printer, Accurate Forms and Supplies, didn't start the job until six days after it was notified.
"It should take no more than a couple of days, three days at the most, 36 hours," he said. "The printer didn't have enough paper."
"And [he] ran out of paper?" Price said incredulously. "He's in the printing business."
In fact, Accurate Forms and Supplies told the county it was having trouble locating enough paper. Price said the company also told him it lost the disc with voters' data.
The company sent out the cards four and five days before election day. Accurate Forms and Supplies said the owners were unavailable to comment.
Price said he knew something was wrong when he began receiving calls from constituents.
"I have got a whole area in that district that got no notices until after the dad-gum election," he said.
The county now plans to send out the same kind of cards to voters for the Dallas Independent School District board runoff two weeks in advance.
E-mail bwatson@wfaa.com
