Scattered complaints from voters and news reports since last week paint a picture of “widespread problems” and dysfunction at Harris County polling places on Election Day. Various reports say “several” polling places didn’t have enough ballot paper. Some didn’t open on time. Some had machines that weren’t working.

But nearly two weeks later, as officials struggle to defend the county’s election from a barrage of criticism and litigation, the county still can’t describe how pervasive the problems were at its 782 polling places and whether any were severe enough to prevent people from voting.

Even now, election staffers are continuing to call each of the more than 700 election judges who worked the polling sites to find out exactly how many locations opened late, how many ran out of paper and how many had issues with voting machines. An investigation by the county’s district attorney launched earlier this week alleges at least 23 polling locations had paper ballot shortages.

Harris is unusual among large Texas counties in not having an effective system for logging its polling place problems. Others have an easier, faster way to gather that data that doesn’t require calling hundreds of people individually and taking down notes. Instead, election software troubleshooting tools, used these days by many election directors across the nation, can help monitor and keep track of every issue reported at polling sites. These tools have features that alert officials of an issue in detail and provide status updates of the resolution in real time.

Cliff Tatum, the newly hired Harris County elections administrator, told county commissioners Tuesday that he is “in dire need” of that kind of software, together with the money to purchase it. Elections administrators in Dallas and Tarrant counties use a sophisticated troubleshooting tracking system, which they say is essential to their operation and costs between $30,000 and $40,000 a year.

Some of the issues Harris County faced, such as late polling site openings and paper ballot shortages, are normal and happen to varying degrees in every election. But without the tools needed to gather details about each problem, experts say, it’ll be difficult to determine the full scope of the issues in the county. It also makes it difficult for election officials to respond to problems efficiently and to explain what happened to the public.

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