Dallas County Election officials Thursday posted new numbers for Saturday's election including hundreds of mail in ballots set aside by a judge over concerns about fraud.
The results remained the same with counting of the mail in ballot votes added in but a criminal investigation continued over suspicions of tampering the mail in ballots.
New accusations surfaced Tuesday about how those mail in ballots were being handled at the election office.
Counting of votes from the 776 ballots began Monday but did not include complete signature authentication, according to election officials and campaign people watching the process.
"We don't know if those were true and authentic," said Jose Plata, an observer for City Councilwoman Monica Alonzo's campaign. "If I was a judge I'd be very upset."
Plata is a former Dallas County elected official himself, serving from 1995 to 2001 as a Dallas Independent School District Trustee.
"Our problem with these ballots is that someone forged names. They forged it on the ballot. They forged it on the application," Plata said.
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Dallas County Election Supervisor Toni Pippins-Poole said officials also saw a flood of mail-in ballots requested by the same person who signed the return envelope as assisting the person who cast the votes.
"That was a red flag for us, and that's why we about three or four weeks ago decided to involve the district attorney," Pippins-Poole said.
Opening the first of the mail-in ballots Monday, members of a signature review board compared signatures on the ballot return envelope to the initial mail-in ballot application to see if they matched.
But the Election Supervisor confirmed that some members did not take the extra step of comparing those signatures to the voter registration application to see if the mail-in ballot was sent to and completed by the actual registered voter.
"Some did and some did not," she said. "All of them didn't understand that that was an option that they should do."
Under these circumstances of mail-in ballot fraud suspicion, Pippins-Poole said that extra step is justified but some mail in ballots were already counted Tuesday that had not gone through that extra scrutiny.
"It impacted a precinct that was overwhelmingly abused," Plata said.
The election supervisor said officials are trying to do everything possilbe to maintain faith in the election system.
"We have tried to do the best we can to make sure those voters votes do count. And we want to make sure that those individuals have done something fraudulently, that those individuals are prosecuted for doing that," she said.
After the mail in ballots were added the secone place finisher behind Alonzo for a June run-off remained Omar Narvaez. He gained an additional 135 votes over the previous margin of just 47 votes ahead of 3rd place candidate Alex Dickey.
Final results for close Dallas ISD and Grand Prairie City Council races also remained the same.
Officials with the Dallas County District Attorney's Office said they are still gathering evidence of who might be responsible for possible mail in ballot fraud.
