Texas must update voting machines with technology that doesn’t exist

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When state lawmakers handed a sweeping and controversial new election regulation in 2021, they quietly included a provision that drew little discover or debate.

But election administration specialists say the measure is unprecedented, it mandates the acquisition of voting technology that doesn’t at present exist — and it’s on the verge of costing taxpayers greater than $100 million.

Sponsors of the availability stated they aimed to stop dishonest in elections by prohibiting using trendy technology to depend votes and retailer cast-ballot knowledge. It handed with out debate on a voice vote and goes into impact simply earlier than the November 2026 normal election.

When it does, hundreds of thousands of {dollars}’ value of voting tools will instantly be prohibited by the brand new regulation, a scenario that may pressure a minimum of some counties to hand-count ballots for lack of a authorized various. Election officers throughout the state are anxious they’ll be left with out the instruments needed to soundly ship correct and well timed election outcomes.

“Humans make mistakes. I’m very worried about the accuracy of our elections if we have to rely on a hand tally of votes,” stated Chambers County Clerk Heather Hawthorne stated. “The inaccuracies would be huge, and our state would be in trouble.”

Election safety specialists are additionally involved. “You may be able to conduct an election, but it would not be accurate, it would not be secure and would not be timely,” stated Ryan Macias, an election administration, safety and technology skilled and founding father of the elections consulting firm RSM Election Solutions. “With how complicated U.S. elections are, this is inconceivable.”

Here’s the way it works now: With permission from the Texas secretary of state, election officers use media storage gadgets corresponding to USB flash drives — supplied by state-certified voting machine distributors — to gather knowledge from poll scanners used at precincts and voting facilities on Election Day. Those drives are how officers simply and safely take that knowledge on solid ballots to a central counting station, the place they’re inserted right into a tabulating pc to rapidly collect outcomes. The tools concerned is dear, and elections officers reuse it every time there’s an election, writing over the earlier knowledge with the brand new election knowledge.

But the provision — proposed by state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, and supported by the invoice’s main writer, Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola — prohibits using this actual sort of knowledge storage machine that may be reused, together with the poll scanners and the tabulating machines. Experts say that to be able to totally comply with the brand new regulation, counties must purchase completely new voting techniques every election cycle.

Lawmakers knew that, or ought to have recognized — the secretary of state’s workplace provided cost estimates earlier than the invoice handed.

According to these estimates, it’s going to value taxpayers greater than $116 million to interchange the eradicated tools. Because any new machines can’t be reused — the information can solely be “written once” — counties could be compelled to proceed shopping for new tools. The secretary of state’s workplace estimates that this ongoing value could be greater than $37 million each two years.

And that’s if counties may even discover compliant voting technology to purchase. The Texas secretary of state’s workplace says the 2 Texas-certified voting machine distributors, Hart InterCivic and Election Systems & Software don’t at present construct such machines. In reality, no machine matching the specs has been invented by any firm working within the United States. Nonetheless, Hall’s provision requires states to buy and implement the technology by Sept. 1, 2026.

Hall didn’t reply to a number of requests for an interview, nor did Hughes. In an emailed assertion to Votebeat, Hall insisted his intention was “to provide an additional measure of security” and that the technology would guarantee that last counts symbolize voter intent. Asked how he’d obtain extra safety by requiring counties to purchase nonexistent machines, he didn’t reply. Asked to supply his ideas on the full value to taxpayers, he didn’t reply.

Hall stated a lot the identical in 2021. The provision would, he stated, forestall votes from being “manipulated” between the precincts or vote facilities and the central counting station. Hall supplied no proof of any cases of manipulation on the time, nor did he achieve this for this story. He additionally didn’t reply to questions concerning the sensible software of the regulation.

The invoice requires that all cast-ballot knowledge be saved in such a means that “once written, [they] cannot be modified.” The technology is also known as “WORM,” which stands for “write once, read many,” and almost all the time refers to CD or DVD drives and their related discs.

The $100 million price ticket is just the start

Without a voting system that is licensed to conform with the availability of the regulation, the secretary of state’s workplace should work intently with county election officers to supply steerage on implement an alternate counting process, Sam Taylor, a spokesperson for the secretary of state, stated in a press release.

Some counties may very well be compelled to hand-count election outcomes, which multiple studies and experts have stated comes with the next danger of fraud and inaccuracies; may end in authorized challenges; and can take extra time, staffing and cash to get carried out. A review of 2020 election outcomes Arizona’s Maricopa County took months and greater than 100 folks, and price taxpayers greater than $1 million to recount greater than 2 million ballots.

“We’d have to provide extensive training, but ultimately [counties] would have to handle the logistics,” Taylor stated. Election officers who violate a provision of the state Election Code, corresponding to through the use of tools that isn’t licensed by the state, may face civil penalties or authorized challenges or may lose their jobs.

The eye-popping prices are notably irritating for election officers, a lot of whom simply purchased new tools to conform with a unique regulation handed in 2021 that required a “paper audit trail” by 2026.

More than 230 counties out of the 254 counties within the state have already complied with that regulation. Many had been already utilizing tools that produced a paper path within the type of a printed poll. Others bought all new tools or modified their current machines with printers. Harris County was the final main county to just lately make the swap, Taylor stated.

Ballot scanning gadgets — which scan information in voted paper ballots and convert it into digital knowledge — value anyplace from $5,000 to $100,000, election officers instructed Votebeat. Counties, relying on their dimension and the variety of precincts and voting facilities they function, will buy a dozen or a whole lot of these. The USB drives — which come with permissions that permit them to be opened solely on particular {hardware}, a safety measure — value between $50 and $70 every. Counties typically purchase a whole lot. During the November election, Harris County used greater than 3,000 such drives.

In smaller counties, massive purchases corresponding to these are merely not within the price range.

Cynthia Lum, Houston County’s elections administrator, stated the county of about 13,000 bought new voting tools in 2021. The county transports vote totals to a central tabulation room on USB drives, as do most counties within the state. It makes use of one central depend poll scanner. “If it has to be replaced, our county does not have that kind of funds to just scrap it and start fresh,” she stated.

Hawthorne, the Chambers County clerk, was additionally assured her county can’t afford it. “To throw away those tax dollars is ridiciculous and it’s concerning. I trust our equipment, we test it for accuracy, and what [Hall] wants doesn’t exist,” she stated. “So this dream [Hall] has that this is the technology that should be used, I’m worried because how does he know that it’s safe and it works if it doesn’t even exist?”

Chambers County, southeast of Houston, has 35,000 registered voters and makes use of Hart InterCivic voting tools. Hawthorne stated the county makes use of 20 poll scanners at polling areas and two tabulation scanners on the central counting station. Given the regulation’s language, the county might be prohibited from utilizing all that technology, alongside with 100 USB drives used to assemble voters’ solid ballots and election outcomes.

Security measures already in place

Counties huge and small have already got safety measures in place that election employees observe to guard voters’ solid ballots, each digital and bodily.

Election officers observe a state-mandated chain-of-custody monitoring process for his or her tools. The tools is labeled and sealed to make sure nothing is tampered with, and representatives from each events are current when votes are counted. As a part of Texas’ new election regulation, ballot watchers at the moment are allowed to see each a part of the election course of and observe election employees who take the ballots and USBs from the polling place to the central counting station. The regulation additionally requires election departments in counties with greater than 100,000 residents to make use of 24-hour video surveillance of the vote-counting course of.

Additionally, each voting machine distributors must cross strict safety checks and testing to acquire federal and state certification.

“And yet there is still this level of scrutiny from our legislators that are sending the message even back to their own districts that ‘we don’t trust you as elections officials,’” Hawthorne stated.

Hall provided the availability as a Senate flooring modification to the GOP’s first model of a restrictive voting invoice authored by Hughes in March 2021 in the course of the common 87th legislative session. Hughes lauded the proposal.

“I think it’s a great amendment,” Hughes stated. “This amendment would make sure that the media they use cannot be written over, it’s just making sure that they can’t cheat. No Republican, Democrat or independent can cheat between the polling place and when the votes get into central count.”

Neither Hall’s nor Hughes’ advocacy on these points was a shock to election officers.

Hall is understood to be among the most conservative GOP members of the Senate and has a document of introducing items of laws primarily based on conspiracy theories.

He has made “election integrity” certainly one of his coverage priorities and even appeared as a featured speaker at an occasion streamed and promoted on-line by The America Project — a company led by former President Donald Trump ally Michael Flynn and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, each well-known for spreading election fraud conspiracy theories.

At the occasion, which occurred in the beginning of this legislative session on the Texas Capitol, he decried “the lack of accuracy, transparency and accountability in the current Texas election process.”

No lawmakers on both facet of the aisle questioned the modification’s actual which means or its implications, however some House Democrats in the summertime of 2021 broke quorum and left the state to stop the invoice as an entire from shifting ahead. The debates had been principally targeted round points corresponding to ID necessities and mail-in poll restrictions, 24-hour and curbside voting, rising penalties for voting illegally, and the way a lot entry ballot watchers may have on the polls and at vote-counting stations.

Although that invoice, Senate Bill 7, in the end didn’t cross, it turned a blueprint for the invoice now often known as Senate Bill 1, additionally authored by Hughes. SB 1 handed throughout a second particular session that summer season. That’s the regulation that in the end included Hall’s provision.

That legislative session was the primary in Texas since Trump had unfold lies concerning the final result of the 2020 election. Nearly 500 election-related payments had been filed in Texas then.

Daniel Griffith, senior director of coverage at Secure Democracy USA, stated 2021 was the primary time lawmakers began seeing such a excessive variety of payments targeted on election administration and using tools. A provision like this one, in SB 1, a invoice packed with controversial provisions, wasn’t high of thoughts for lawmakers.

“[Lawmakers] had a lot of other things that were distracting them, and there was no legislative session last year,” he stated. “So this is the first chance people will have to really take a look at [the provision]. Now that some of those distractions are out of the way, hopefully they’ll be able to take it out and take care of it.”

At the time, election officers additionally needed to be selective about which items of laws to prioritize and supply their enter on, stated Chris Davis, Williamson County elections administrator. They had been targeted on provisions they’d must implement extra rapidly, by the next main election.

But election officers at the moment are devoting all of their consideration to the implications these necessities can have on counties and on election officers.

“These last three sessions were just kind of like playing whack-a-mole,” Davis stated, including that lawmakers ought to give different components of SB 1 an opportunity to handle their issues associated to election safety. “Give the video surveillance a chance. Give the part of the bill that’s giving poll watchers more authority to observe things a couple of election cycles to see if their concerns are being addressed. Because right now it seems like they’re throwing everything against the wall.”

Texas Tribune reporter Pooja Salhotra contributed to this story.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting entry for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at [email protected].

Disclosure: Secure Democracy and the Texas secretary of state has been a monetary supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group that is funded partially by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Find an entire list of them here.