Dallas County election officials are expected to complete a recount of ballots cast at three early voting locations on Friday after discrepancies were discovered in the processing of the Nov. 5 general election, according to court records.

Election Administrator Heider Garcia filed an emergency petition in Dallas County District Court on Monday, saying he needs a court order to open lockboxes at three early voting centers to verify the total number of votes cast there.

Judge Tonya Parker granted the request Wednesday, and her order stated that the recalculation would occur Thursday and Friday.

Neither Garcia nor communications manager Nic Solorzano responded to an email and text message seeking comment Thursday.

According to Garcia’s petition, officials initially found a discrepancy between the number of ballots recorded on tabulation equipment tapes at three early voting locations and the number of voters registered at those locations. Although the file does not specify when the problem arose, the voting locations are as follows: Northway Christian Church, Disciple Central Community Church and Ministerios Charisma.

According to the petition, in accordance with state election law that specifies how to handle such a discrepancy, officials conducted a physical count of paper ballots in those precincts at a central counting station and then placed the ballots in sealed boxes.

But after locking down, officials realized that the number of ballots they had just recorded at the central counting station did not match the numbers produced by ballots at those three early voting locations.

There were differences of 329 votes in Northway Church, 144 votes in Disciple Central, and 115 votes in Ministerios Charisma.

Garcia attributed the difference to human error at the central counting station.

“Counting every vote is a fundamental concept for our representative democracy,” Garcia’s petition states.

According to the petition, Garcia consulted with Christina Adkins, director of elections for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office; Adkins acknowledged that reissuing paper ballots “was the appropriate solution” but that a court order was required to open sealed ballot boxes.

Under Parker’s order, the recount of paper ballots at the three early voting centers will be done using central counting station tabulators. The results will be reported to the chairmen of the Democratic and Republican parties and the Texas secretary of state, and will be the official vote totals from those three sites.

The recount will end Tuesday for Dallas County to review the final election results before submitting certified results to the state. But the canvas must be publicly posted 72 hours in advance, meaning the clerk must receive the notice by noon Friday.

The discrepancy follows other problems during early voting in Dallas County, including glitches in the electronic poll book software used to register voters.

Problems arose as poll book devices showed blank screens and error messages, requiring the devices to be restarted, as poll workers attempted to check in with voters. This caused queues of up to two hours at some polling places on October 21, the first day of early voting.

Due to malfunctions in the ballot boxes, barcodes corresponding to the wrong ballot boxes were printed on the ballot papers of some voters. In some cases, poll workers and voters noticed errors, allowing corrected ballots to be issued before voters went to voting machines.

But on Thursday, County Commissioners Court Judge Clay Jenkins confirmed that about 4,500 voters in the county, including about 2,100 in the city of Dallas, voted in precincts where they do not live. This problem means that some voters submitted ballots without the recommendations they should be able to vote based on local races or place of residence. In other cases, residents voted in local races in which they were not eligible to vote.

The electronic poll book issues were alleviated, but not fully resolved, by a configuration update through the manufacturer Election Systems and Software on the first day of early voting. Garcia had previously confirmed that votes cast in the wrong precincts would continue to be counted in the final election results, as there was no legal remedy before the votes were counted.