After years of using a touchscreen machine to mark their ballots, voters in at least three Texas counties will be asked instead to make their selections directly on the paper ballots, by hand, starting in November.
Election officials in Collin, Williamson, and Bastrop counties said they’re proactively changing their voting procedures and equipment in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump in March that sought to mostly ban voting equipment that uses barcodes or QR codes on paper ballots to speed up vote counting.
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Some other provisions in the executive order have been blocked by the courts, but this one has not. The order instructed the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which crafts the certification guidelines that most states rely on for their voting equipment, to amend the guidelines to prohibit such systems and “take appropriate action” to review and rescind previously issued certifications based on prior standards.
U.S. EAC Commissioner Donald Palmer told state election directors at a July conference that “there won’t be mass decertification of systems” in the near future. Still, Trump’s order has sparked questions from the public and uncertainty about the use of different kinds of voting machines.
Election officials have concerns, too, about the potential cost and complexity of having to switch voting systems. Some Texas counties, and officials in states including Ohio, California, and West Virginia, are opting to make changes now, in a year without a federal election, hoping to prevent disruption closer to the 2026 midterms.
“Every election is important, but you would never want to try such a big change for a primary election,” said Kaleb Breaux, election administrator in Collin County, north of Dallas, which is spending $2.3 million on the switch. “You want it to be a known process that your voters and people in your county trust.”
His department is planning to host events next month to give voters a chance to familiarize themselves with new equipment.
Touchscreen Voting Machines, Barcodes and the Trump Order
In most Texas counties — including the most populous — voters make their selections on touchscreen machines known as ballot-marking devices. At check-in, they receive a blank paper ballot that is inserted into the ballot marking device. Once a voter makes their selections on screen, the machine prints them out on the ballot for the voter to review. Then the voter inserts the ballot into the tabulation machine to be counted.
The counties potentially affected by Trump’s executive order use ballot-marking devices made by Elections Systems & Software, one of two state-certified voting system vendors. In addition to marking the ballots with the voter’s choices, the ES&S equipment prints a machine-readable code reflecting those choices that is used to speed up tabulation.
Critics of such systems have argued for years that voters have no way of knowing whether the code accurately reflects their choices, even though the results are audited.
ES&S told Votebeat that it is developing new equipment to meet the latest iteration of federal guidelines, and that it won’t use codes.
Equipment from Hart Intercivic, the other state-certified vendor, doesn’t use machine-readable codes.
Both vendors also give counties the option of using paper ballots that voters mark by hand. Those systems still use tabulator machines to scan the ballots and count the votes.
Last month, Texas Elections Director Christina Adkins told a group of election officials that she’s waiting to see what action the federal EAC takes on certification of voting equipment in response to Trump’s executive order.
Any change to the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines would immediately affect Texas’ certified voting systems, which must follow the federal guidelines under state law.
Adkins said voters across the state have been speaking at public meetings and have asked legislators about the part of the president’s executive order on machine-readable codes and paper ballots.
She asked election officials to be prepared to answer questions from voters in their communities with accurate information about the order and how the state plans to respond.
Meanwhile, a Republican-led push to ditch all electronic voting equipment — including the tabulators — and hand count ballots instead, has made inroads in Texas.
Gillespie County in the Texas Hill Country hand-counted thousands of ballots in the 2024 primary, but had to fix a series of errors in the results, which couldn’t easily be audited for accuracy because the ballots couldn’t be scanned by machines.
Different Methods of Voting in Texas
About 80% of Texas’ 254 counties use machines to mark voters’ choices on paper ballots.
In the rest, including Denton County in North Texas and Cameron County in South Texas, voters mark the paper ballots by hand, and then put them in the tabulator for counting.
(Even these counties must make at least one electronic voting machine available in each voting location to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.) .
Two small Texas counties — Limestone and Foard — don’t use paper ballots at all, but state law will require them to by next year.
Paper ballots, whether marked by a hand or a machine, are typically considered the gold standard for election security.
They allow voters to check their selections before casting their ballot, and create a physical record for audits and recounts.
But is one way of marking ballots better than the other? Some election officials say that with hand-marked ballots, it’s harder to determine voter intent if there’s a doubt, or for a scanner to read the voter’s selections.
On the other hand, some say hand-marked ballots allow voters to check for errors right away, rather than having to wait until they’re done voting and their ballot is printed out. And lines can move faster if people don’t have to wait for a machine.
Collin County Prepares for Changes
In Collin County, a Republican-led community with 750,000 registered voters, the switch away from ballot-marking devices follows years of lobbying by activists urging the commissioner court to eliminate voting machines, even though the system has gotten high marks from the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.
A measure to make the change failed last year, but county officials approved a new one in June.
Trump’s executive order “was a bit of a catalyst for the court to revisit this move,” said Kaleb Breaux, the Collin County elections director.
As a result, 1,500 ballot-marking devices, which the county has used since 2019, will be put in storage. The county will still use about 300 of them at polling locations to comply with federal law on disability access.
Trump’s executive order allows leeway for that, as long as the machines produce a voter-verifiable paper record.
The $2.3 million the county is spending includes the purchase of voting booths, printers, laptops, and other election materials. Breaux said the voting booths take up less space than the voting machines, so polling locations can accommodate more voters than before.
However, he wants to encourage voters to take their time marking their ballots in November to avoid problems tallying later. “Make sure they’re bubbling everything in completely,” he said. “And if they mess up their ballot, don’t be afraid to ask for another one.”.
Breaux said he hopes the new method of voting can help boost voter trust.
“I think what we had worked well,” he said, “but I also think this is going to work just as well for our voters and our workers.”
Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org
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