After ban on barcodes, three counties are eliminating the touchscreen machines they’ve lengthy used and having voters mark their ballots by hand.
By Natalia Contreras for Votebeat
After years of utilizing a touchscreen machine to mark their ballots, voters in no less than three Texas counties will likely be requested as a substitute to make their choices immediately on the paper ballots, by hand, beginning in November.
Election officers in Collin, Williamson, and Bastrop counties mentioned they’re proactively altering their voting procedures and tools in response to an government order from President Donald Trump in March that sought to largely ban voting tools that makes use of barcodes or QR codes on paper ballots to hurry up vote counting.
Another provisions within the government order have been blocked by the courts, however this one has not. The order instructed the U.S. Election Help Fee, which crafts the certification pointers that the majority states depend on for his or her voting tools, to amend the rules to ban such methods and “take appropriate action” to assessment and rescind beforehand issued certifications based mostly on prior requirements.
U.S. EAC Commissioner Donald Palmer advised state election administrators at a July convention that “there won’t be mass decertification of systems” within the close to future. Nonetheless, Trump’s order has sparked questions from the general public and uncertainty about the usage of totally different sorts of voting machines.
Election officers have considerations, too, in regards to the potential value and complexity of getting to modify voting methods. Some Texas counties, and officers in states together with Ohio, California, and West Virginia, are opting to make adjustments now, in a 12 months and not using a federal election, hoping to forestall disruption nearer to the 2026 midterms.
“Every election is important, but you would never want to try such a big change for a primary election,” mentioned Kaleb Breaux, election administrator in Collin County, north of Dallas, which is spending $2.3 million on the swap. “You want it to be a known process that your voters and people in your county trust.”
His division is planning to host occasions subsequent month to offer voters an opportunity to familiarize themselves with new tools.
Touchscreen voting machines, barcodes and the Trump order
In most Texas counties — together with essentially the most populous — voters make their choices on touchscreen machines generally known as ballot-marking gadgets. At check-in, they obtain a clean paper poll that’s inserted into the poll marking system. As soon as a voter makes their choices on display, the machine prints them out on the poll for the voter to assessment. Then the voter inserts the poll into the tabulation machine to be counted.
Donald Trump signed an government order in March to ban sure varieties of voting tools.
The counties doubtlessly affected by Trump’s government order use ballot-marking gadgets made by Elections Techniques & Software program, one in every of two state-certified voting system distributors. Along with marking the ballots with the voter’s decisions, the ES&S tools prints a machine-readable code reflecting these decisions that’s used to hurry up tabulation.
Critics of such methods have argued for years that voters haven’t any method of understanding whether or not the code precisely displays their decisions, though the outcomes are audited.
ES&S advised Votebeat that it’s growing new tools to fulfill the newest iteration of federal pointers, and that it received’t use codes. Tools from Hart Intercivic, the opposite state-certified vendor, doesn’t use machine-readable codes.
Each distributors additionally give counties the choice of utilizing paper ballots that voters mark by hand. These methods nonetheless use tabulator machines to scan the ballots and depend the votes.
Final month, Texas Elections Director Christina Adkins advised a bunch of election officers that she’s ready to see what motion the federal EAC takes on certification of voting tools in response to Trump’s government order. Any change to the Voluntary Voting System Tips would instantly have an effect on Texas’ licensed voting methods, which should observe the federal pointers underneath state legislation.
Adkins mentioned voters throughout the state have been talking at public conferences and have requested legislators in regards to the a part of the president’s government order on machine-readable codes and paper ballots. She requested election officers to be ready to reply questions from voters of their communities with correct details about the order and the way the state plans to reply.
In the meantime, a Republican-led push to ditch all digital voting tools — together with the tabulators — and hand depend ballots as a substitute, has made inroads in Texas. Gillespie County within the Texas Hill Nation hand-counted 1000’s of ballots within the 2024 major, however needed to repair a collection of errors within the outcomes, which couldn’t simply be audited for accuracy as a result of the ballots couldn’t be scanned by machines.
Totally different strategies of voting in Texas
About 80% of Texas’ 254 counties use machines to mark voters’ decisions on paper ballots. In the remaining, together with Denton County in North Texas and Cameron County in South Texas, voters mark the paper ballots by hand, after which put them within the tabulator for counting. (Even these counties should make no less than one digital voting machine obtainable in every voting location to adjust to the People with Disabilities Act.) .
Two small Texas counties — Limestone and Foard — don’t use paper ballots in any respect, however state legislation would require them to by subsequent 12 months.
Paper ballots, whether or not marked by a hand or a machine, are usually thought of the gold commonplace for election safety. They permit voters to examine their choices earlier than casting their poll, and create a bodily file for audits and recounts.
However is a method of marking ballots higher than the opposite? Some election officers say that with hand-marked ballots, it’s tougher to find out voter intent if there’s a doubt, or for a scanner to learn the voter’s choices. Alternatively, some say hand-marked ballots enable voters to examine for errors immediately, slightly than having to attend till they’re achieved voting and their poll is printed out. And contours can transfer quicker if individuals don’t have to attend for a machine.
Collin County prepares for the adjustments
In Collin County, a Republican-led group with 750,000 registered voters, the swap away from ballot-marking gadgets follows years of lobbying by activists urging the commissioner court docket to eradicate voting machines, though the system has gotten excessive marks from the Texas Secretary of State’s Workplace.
A measure to make the change failed final 12 months, however county officers permitted a brand new one in June.
Trump’s government order “was a bit of a catalyst for the court to revisit this move,” mentioned Kaleb Breaux, the Collin County elections director.
Because of this, 1,500 ballot-marking gadgets, which the county has used since 2019, will likely be put in storage. The county will nonetheless use about 300 of them at polling areas to adjust to federal legislation on incapacity entry. Trump’s government order permits leeway for that, so long as the machines produce a voter-verifiable paper file.
The $2.3 million the county is spending contains the acquisition of voting cubicles, printers, laptops, and different election supplies. Breaux mentioned the voting cubicles take up much less house than the voting machines, so polling areas can accommodate extra voters than earlier than.
Nevertheless, he needs to encourage voters to take their time marking their ballots in November to keep away from issues tallying later. “Make sure they’re bubbling everything in completely,” he mentioned. “And if they mess up their ballot, don’t be afraid to ask for another one.”.
Breaux mentioned he hopes the brand new technique of voting might help enhance voter belief.
“I think what we had worked well,” he mentioned, “but I also think this is going to work just as well for our voters and our workers.”
