A Midland elections staffer discovered a missing box on a bottom shelf last week which contained 836 ballots that were not included in a recount of a November proposal which failed by only 25 votes. The initial November 5 vote sought to approve or deny giving Midland school administrators $569 million to construct two new high school buildings. Last month, the Midland County Elections Office admitted to posting the incorrect results on their website which showed the bond passed, before changing it to show that the proposal actually failed.

On Monday morning, Midland County officials obtained a court order to open the “mystery” ballot box that had become separated from the 17 others and may potentially produce a third election result, the Midland Reporter-Telegram reported.

Special political action committees (PACs) on both sides of the vote have filed to contest the election results in the western Texas district of about 26,000 students, citing a demand for transparency in the voting process.

Early voting, election day voting and provisional ballots produced the first result in which 11,581 votes were in favor and 11,563 were opposed to the proposal, an 18-vote margin in favor of the bond. But after mail-in ballots were counted, the new total flipped the results in the other direction by 25 votes, 11,828 votes opposed versus 11,803 votes in favor, as The Texas Tribune reported this week.

The results of the manual counting being conducted by Midland election officials this week could once again change the election outcome and residents have demanded to know why there was a missing ballot box in the first place.

A “copying issue” is just one of the many factors being blamed for the plethora of discrepancies uncovered in the bond vote. Several discrepancies between electronic ballots versus paper ballots and physical copies versus electronic system copies led to some boxes of votes being counted during the first November 5 unofficial vote tally - but not during the recount.

Midland election officials had previously noted an 820-vote shortage during the recount because the “mystery” box was not included. Election Administrator Deborah Land offered up one of many factors for why the box was separated from the others, saying that voting machines had experienced a “high frequency of usage” and administrators used a different colored ballot in order to quickly switch out new paper ballots, YourBasin.com reported.

“It was human error,” Land said, before detailing to the local Texas news outlet how the errors occurred.

“On Election Night, there were two reports posted on our website,” Land said. “One said unofficial results, and that was ballot by-mail, which at that time was 501, and then, the cumulative is only early voting and election day in person – and those numbers should have been added together, and no one was catching that.”

Midland residents, both PACs and Republican State Senator Kel Seliger all expressed their demands for a better election process regardless of the outcome.

“Every Texan deserves to have full faith in our elections process. I met with the@TXsecofstate’s office while in Austin yesterday to get a complete update on the@Midland_ISD bond election. While the SOS is only able to advise local officials I have no doubt that their presence and guidance in Midland will help ensure the Midland County Elections Administrator moves forward in the appropriate manner. Election integrity is one of my top priorities as it is the main pillar of democracy and my office is watching this closely #txed,” Seliger tweeted last week.

Critics of the proposal in the Better Bond for Midland group and opponents in the We Choose Our Future group, have each called for more MISD accountability.

Regardless of what the election’s third result is, the vote discrepancy may not actually change the overall result because County Judge Terry Johnson “canvassed” the manual recount - or made it official - on November 15.

Voting problems are far from simply a Texas issue. Widespread electronic voting malfunctions and hacking fears are compounded by other voting districts where paper ballots are frequently hand counted and subject to human error or corruption. A “Voting Machines” segment on HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver last month highlighted a former U.S. Election Assistance Commission chairman who noted Congress has little incentive to help improve the voting process because lawmakers figure it “got them into office.”