HISD candidate: Name on ballot wrong
A candidate for the Houston Independent School District board of education said Friday that his name has been printed incorrectly on ballots and that county elections officials said it is too late to change the name.
Lee “Mac” Walker, running for the District 7 seat, said the issue came to his attention last weekend when a voter emailed to ask if he was on the ballot. The voter sent him a picture of the ballot, which showed his legal name, Lee Walker, instead of the nickname he has gone by and campaigned under, he said.
Walker’s notarized application shows that he wrote that he wanted his name to be displayed as Mac Walker on the ballot, according to district records. The application has a notary’s stamp on the bottom. A sample ballot shows his name appears as Lee Walker.
An HISD spokesperson said Friday evening that the district was looking into questions from the Chronicle.
“I have gone by Mac since the day I was born,” Walker said. “I am just disappointed.”
The other candidates running for the seat are Bridget Wade, Dwight Jefferson and incumbent Anne Sung.
Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria told Walker that changing the language of the ballot would require a new logic and accuracy test for the entire election, according to an email sent to Walker that he shared with the Chronicle.
That test requires more than 15,500 ballots, five days and more than 60 staffers. Post-test requirements include multiple tasks that would be “impossible” to complete before Wednesday, when equipment and materials will be delivered to early voting sites, Longoria wrote in the email.
“In short: at this point in our election preparations, making a correction in even one race would
imperil our ability to start early voting for all the 44 entities on the ballot,” Longoria wrote. “After consultation with the Office of Texas Secretary of State, I’ve decided to move forward with our course of action to avoid derailing the entire Nov. 2nd election.”
A spokesperson for the office said the logic and accuracy test, which requires the voting of all the different combinations that can be voted, are conducted in September for a November election.
“That is just not feasible,” said Nadia Hakim, deputy director of communication and voter outreach for Harris County Elections.
The name on the ballot is the name provided by the entity the candidate filed with, Hakim said.
Meanwhile, Walker said his campaign shirts say Mac, his bumper stickers say Mac, some 300 to 400 yard signs say Mac and he has been introducing himself as Mac when knocking on doors. He said he wants accountability.