Texas law requires that election inspectors be provided to counties when the Secretary of State's office receives a petition with the signatures of at least 15 registered voters. But the Secretary of State's office won't release the forms until after the election. They aren't public record until after the election,'' said Jane Dees, a spokeswoman with the Secretary of State's office which oversees elections. The deadline to submit such requests for the Nov. 7 election is Wednesday. The Bee County inspector will visit a number of voting places in the county throughout the day, Dees said.
Inspectors are state employees who watch to make sure general election laws are followed.
That includes making sure there is no campaigning within 100 feet of the polling site and ensuring that election workers distribute ballots properly. But sending inspectors to counties does not necessarily mean that there is any wrongdoing in those communities. They will be looking for general violations,'' Dees said. Bee County residents may have asked for an inspector to avoid ballot-counting problems that delayed local vote tallies by a day during the March primaries. It was nearly midnight on March 14, election night, when the ballot tabulator machine started miscounting some ballots because of a discrepancy in ballot numbers, Bee County Clerk Julia Torres has said.