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F I S C A L I M P A C T R E P O R T
SPONSOR Lopez
ORIGINAL DATE
LAST UPDATED
2/26/07
HB
SHORT TITLE Various Election Code Changes
SB 980
ANALYST Ortiz
APPROPRIATION (dollars in thousands)
Appropriation
Recurring
or Non-Rec
Fund
Affected
FY07
FY08
NFI
(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)
Duplicates HB 1156
Relates to HB1155
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
LFC Files
Responses Received From
Attorney General’s Office (AGO)
Secretary of State
SUMMARY
Synopsis of Bill
Senate Bill 980 provides both substantive changes and terminology updates to several sections of
the Election Code.
Section 1. New Material. The Secretary of State shall issue rules to ensure the accuracy of the
vote tabulators. The rules shall include that a random selection of ballots—2% in each county
for statewide or federal office OR 100 ballots or 5% (whichever is greater) cast for any other
office—shall be hand counted and also run through the tabulator. The rules shall state that if the
results differ (by ¼ of 1% or less in statewide or federal office OR 1% or two votes), then the
remaining ballots shall be run through the tabulator. If not, the remaining ballots shall be hand
counted.