(HOUSTON) — A spokesman for Harris County's elections administrations office says the decision to postpone the count of absentee ballots in the House District 149 race has not been influenced by the Secretary of State's office.

Public information officer David Beirne said the count had been delayed because the two candidates, Rep. Talmadge Heflin (R-Houston) and Democratic challenger Hubert Vo, were not in agreement over today's count.

The count will now take place at 1 p.m. on Sunday and will be expanded to include all mail-in, provisional and military ballots from across the county. The ballot board was due to review only 130 mail-in and 181 provisional ballots in HD 149 at today's meeting.

"We want to extend as much transparency as possible to the process because of the closeness of the race," Beirne said. "There was a lack of mutual consent among the candidates and we will consider all the mail-in ballots and the provisional ballots from across the county on Sunday."

Beirne did not say which candidate was unhappy with today's arrangements. Vo spokesman Kelly Fero contacted QR to say Vo had not been consulted over the ballot board meeting.

Fero said that Ann McGeehan, director of elections in the Secretary of State's Office, had informed Harris County elections officer Beverly Kaufman that ballot counting for a single legislative district could not be segregated from the rest of the process of counting provisional, absentee and military ballots.

Bill Kenyon, a spokesman for Secretary of State Geoff Connor, confirmed that his office had been in "constant contact" with Harris County officials and had "encouraged" them to count all absentee ballots from across the county at the same time. Kenyon said he understood there were about 2,000 absentee ballots still to be counted across the county.