County elections chief hopes for more work

EDINBURG — Hidalgo County Elections Administrator Yvonne Ramón wants to convince cities to hand their elections over to the experts.

In the wake of Election Day problems at Progreso polls, Ramón plans to ask the county's municipalities and school districts to contract the county the duty to do everything from putting the machines in place to tallying the votes.

"There's a lot of work that goes into putting together an election, much that people don't realize," Ramón said this week. "It's something that we do every day of the year."

Ramón's office organizes federal, state, and county elections and manages all facets of the voter registration process, but it has little oversight in municipal elections unless the cities request it.

The Secretary of State's office generally allows cities, schools and political entities to run their own elections, but Ramón said many of them are not versed in the vast rules and regulations required by the state.

In November's election, Ramón's office handled balloting at 84 precincts for federal, state and county elections, she said. Her office also ran elections for seven school districts that contracted with the county.

But almost all of the complaints that her office fielded involved municipal elections in Progreso, where reports of non-residents voting, illegal immigrants participating and other allegations of fraud started trickling in at the beginning of early voting.

The Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office eventually impounded all the ballots cast in Progreso's elections after a voter reported possible mail-in vote fraud.

Ramón's office handled the complaints, forwarding them on to the Secretary of State's office, even though the county had little to do with the city's polling. But she said the problems in Progreso indicated not everyone should try to run an election.

Ramón said she will start to meet with city officials at the beginning of the year to talk to them about contracting with the Elections Administration's office to run elections.

If she can't convince them to allow her office to run their elections, she said, she wants to require in-depth training before they can lease the county's voting machines.

The classes would involve a "trainer of trainers" session for officials running the elections for the cities, schools or political entities.

Ramón's field specialists would train the officials on the machines, required documentation and other elections regulations. The officials would then pass that information to their own staffs running the elections.

Ramón said the training would eliminate some of the problems encountered in the Progreso election.

"A lot of times what happens (when there is a problem in elections not run by the county), a phone call is place to our office," Ramón said. "Ultimately, the one who suffers is the voter."

Jared Janes covers Hidalgo County government and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4424.