Texas voting machines aren’t switching votes

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Warnings to double-check early-voting ballots started spreading throughout social media this week as some Texas voters claimed that digital voting machines had switched their votes from Democratic to Republican.

But this isn’t a case of grand conspiracy, malfeasance or rigged machines. Instead, election officers, safety specialists and voting rights advocates say a number of the touch-sensitive screens on voting machines might be tough to make use of, very similar to miscues whereas attempting to make use of a smartphone. Midland County Election Administrator Carolyn Graves likened the expertise to texting with a small keypad.

“If you don’t hit it just exactly right, you’re gonna hit one of the letters around it,” Graves mentioned. “It’s essentially the same thing. If you don’t hit it with the tip of your finger or turn your finger to the side, then you could hit the other [choice].”

This isn’t the primary election throughout which voters have been cautious of voting machines. In 2018, Texas officials said voters had been trying to make their picks earlier than machines might render and document their votes, inflicting comparable issues within the U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and Democrat Beto O’Rourke.

“These issues have been showing up, in one form or another, since electronic voting machines were first introduced 20-plus years ago,” mentioned Dan Wallach, a pc science professor at Rice University and longtime election safety researcher. “As far as we can tell, these are simply design issues with the machines.”

So, what’s a voter to do? Election officers, safety specialists and voting rights advocates agree voters ought to fastidiously assessment their ballots to confirm picks. If there’s an error on a printed poll, voters have the fitting to rise up to 2 extra ballots to make corrections. The incorrect ballots are then spoiled and never counted.

Newer machines are likely to have fewer touch-screen calibration issues, Wallach mentioned, and lots of Texas counties have upgraded in recent times. But the machines nonetheless could not sit at an angle that makes them straightforward to make use of, particularly since a voter’s top can have an effect on their line of sight.

“If you’re not looking absolutely straight at the screen … then you start getting this issue where the way that you see it and the way that it sees you are not the same thing,” he mentioned.

In such instances, voters ought to stay calm and attempt to shift their goal.

“You can correct it by figuring out that you need to aim higher or lower, as appropriate, in order to hit your target,” Wallach mentioned.

User error vs. delicate machines

Several native county officers, a voting rights group and the secretary of state’s workplace all confirmed receiving a small variety of experiences of voters encountering points with contact screens on the polls.

Cathy Broadrick, chair of the Midland County Democratic Party, mentioned Thursday she had heard about 14 complaints. The Texas Civil Rights Project, which helps run a voter-protection hotline, had heard seven experiences of comparable points by Thursday from voters in Bell, Bexar, Collin, Travis and Midland counties.

“It’s not switching their votes to somebody they didn’t vote for,” mentioned Sam Taylor, spokesperson for the secretary of state’s workplace. He mentioned in some instances voters could “accidentally tap something right above the race that they’re currently voting on.”

The experiences make up a small fraction of the a whole lot of 1000’s of Texans who had already voted early by Friday. One was Alicia Edwards, a 46-year-old who voted along with her husband on the Midland County Centennial Library on Monday. She needed to vote for Democratic candidates for statewide places of work however had hassle making these picks on the county’s ballot-marking machine.

“I went to vote for Beto and the check mark showed up on Greg Abbott. And so I switched it back,” she mentioned. “I moved down to the next person. Same exact thing happened.”

She fastidiously reviewed her poll earlier than printing and casting it, altering her votes again to Democratic candidates. When she later heard about others going through the identical situation, she posted about her expertise on-line, tweeting, “The TX GOP is up to the same dirty tricks.”

Told by The Texas Tribune that she was dealing not with rigged elections however with delicate contact screens, Edwards mentioned officers ought to get completely different machines as an alternative of blaming voters.

“It should be in their interest to make sure that Texas voters, that we have machines that work properly,” she mentioned, “that we don’t have to press four and five times to get our choice on the ballot.”

She mentioned she trusts the election course of and ballot employees however was left unsettled by the voting machines.

“I trust those people that they’re in there to do the right thing,” she mentioned. “It’s the machine.”

Midland County makes use of ExpressVote ballot-marking machines from the corporate Election Systems & Software, in line with Verified Voting, a nonprofit advocacy group that tracks voting tools throughout the United States.

Election Systems & Software spokesperson Katina Granger mentioned that “there is no evidence of any so-called vote switching by equipment.”

“Please note that voters are always able to check their printed paper ballots for accuracy before casting,” Granger mentioned in an e-mail.

Emily Eby, a senior election safety legal professional for the Texas Civil Rights Project, mentioned the secretary of state and counties ought to submit indicators and share extra information warning voters of potential person difficulties and, in the long term, put money into extra user-friendly voting machines.

“These foreseeable problems on voting machines, that’s a machine error, not a user error to me,” she mentioned.

Counties reply

Eby mentioned the voter-protection hotline notified the counties the place voters reported points.

The election departments in Travis and Collin counties mentioned they might create “an internal tech support ticket and look into the issue,” Eby mentioned, and Bell County promised to look into it. Bexar County mentioned voters must inform ballot employees “in the moment in order to get help,” Eby mentioned, and the group had not but heard again from Midland County on Thursday.

Bell County Elections Administrator Desi Roberts informed the Tribune he visited polling websites and didn’t discover any malfunctioning machines. He mentioned the county was responding with extra voter training to remind folks to assessment their poll selections.

In Midland, Graves, the elections administrator, mentioned she had changed one of many voting machines on the Midland County Centennial Library “for everybody to feel good” and made pencils accessible for voters to make use of the erasers as a stylus if they’ve hassle with the contact display.

Lisa Wise, the elections administrator for El Paso County, informed the Tribune she had not heard of any points with the ExpressVote machines this yr, however she did hear of some points with the contact screens when the county began utilizing that mannequin in 2019. The county now gives voters with stylus pens, she mentioned.

“What we tell voters is to make sure that you use the stylus we provide because we’ve had people who are, you know, trying to mark something and then like their bracelet hits the next [choice] or something like that,” she mentioned.

Trudy Hancock, the elections administrator for Brazos County, mentioned in an e-mail Wednesday that she had not heard of points in her county, which makes use of Verity Duo ballot-marking machines from the corporate Hart InterCivic.

Secure machines

Hancock, who can also be president of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators, mentioned that “there are too many safeguards in place for the machine to switch votes.”

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission certifies all voting techniques, and the Texas secretary of state additionally approves voting systems. Only Election Systems & Software and Hart InterCivic techniques are allowed in Texas.

Approved ballot-marking machines and different voting tools, together with poll scanners often known as tabulators, can’t have the potential to hook up with the web or different wi-fi gadgets, in line with the secretary of state’s workplace. Only the gadgets used to examine voter registration can connect with the web.

Texas voting machines additionally go through multiple tests. They are examined twice earlier than every election, together with throughout a check held earlier than the general public, and as soon as after the election to make sure there have been no points. The supply code of the software program is verified, and locks and seals are positioned on the machines to stop and detect any potential tampering.

C. Jay Coles, senior coverage and advocacy affiliate for Verified Voting, mentioned these safeguards assist improve safety, however a machine remains to be vulnerable to hacking and malware.

“It’s very difficult to get access to the machines and be able to program them that way, though the opportunity does exist,” he mentioned.

Studies have proven voting machines might be hacked, he mentioned, which is why the group advocates for using hand-marked paper ballots for many voters.

Election Systems & Software acknowledges these “staged demonstrations” on its website however says “these environments do not reflect an actual election scenario where multiple layers of physical and cyber security are always in place.”

From a safety perspective, Wallach mentioned hand-marked paper ballots are safer, however digital voting machines can supply extra accessibility options, comparable to enlarging textual content, connecting to headphones for audio captioning and displaying a number of languages.

“Not everybody has the adequate sight or manual dexterity to be able to operate a paper ballot and a pen,” mentioned Wallach, the pc science professor at Rice University. “There’s a lot of things that a computer can do that a piece of paper cannot do.”

And whereas voting machines have been hacked by researchers in managed research, there’s“zero evidence of any election tampering” to this point, Wallach mentioned.

It’s essential for voting machines to provide paper ballots, Wallach mentioned, as a result of that permits elections officers to audit elections. Texas doesn’t require all voting machines to go away a paper path, however most counties have shifted to machines that do, in line with the secretary of state’s workplace. The state Legislature additionally handed a law final yr that can make this a requirement by 2026.

“The ability to do a recount manually, whether you do it or not, the fact that you have the ability to do it helps mitigate against malware in tabulation software,” Wallach mentioned.

Disclosure: Rice University and the Texas secretary of state have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group that’s 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.