Tom Green County Commissioners approved a pair of resolutions aimed at keeping the current electronic-voting equipment and vote centers in place.
Elections Administrator Vona Hudson told commissioners about bills filed recently in the legislature aimed at restoring paper ballots and eliminating the vote centers, which have been in use locally since 2014.
She hopes the resolutions will let folks in Austin know that Tom Green County residents and officials want to keep the current system in place.
“There is proposed legislation to eliminate use of (electronic) poll books and electronic ballot-marking devices,” Hudson told commissioners. “Which would effect us in several ways; we would have to go back to hand-marked paper ballots and old (voter) rolls, where we would have to look everyone up…so it would have the effect of delaying us from being able to produce lists of who voted, because we would have to be doing manual entry… and this would lead into us not being able to use county-wide polling places because you wouldn’t be able to ascertain how many ballots to send to each location, nor would you be able to verify who has already voted.”
Pct. 3 Commissioner Rick Bacon said the system is working well.
“I think it’s extremely important that we continue to maintain this (system),” Bacon said. “The last few elections that we’ve had are really indicative of the fact that we have a safe and very accurate way to do this. When you have an election where you have two hand-counts that verify that the electronic voting that took place was accurate, and shows that there were actually no discrepancies, speaks highly of that. And so, certainly, we are very much in support of you being able to do that.”
Hudson and Bacon talked about the rigorous testing process used to ensure election security and accuracy.
“People really don’t know what you guys go through before and after an election, to verify everything,” Bacon said. “It’s very involved, and we appreciate you and your staff.”
Hudson told commissioners she had three letters in support of the resolutions from the City of San Angelo, San Angelo Independent School District and Water Valley ISD, who entrust their elections to the county.
She also mentioned that the feedback she has received from the public and from officials at every level is overwhelmingly positive regarding electronic voting, and county-wide vote centers.
Hudson said having to return to precinct voting would represent a major setback in her opinion, and would definitely slow things down when it comes to counting time.
She said ultimately, it would cost the county significantly because of the need to purchase additional equipment, and noted that finding extra poll workers to cover 34 voting precincts might be a challenge.
In other business:
Commissioners took no action on the county-wide burn ban, but with the lack of precipitation, it’s a likely bet that the ban will be back in place soon.
The Tom Green County Commissioners Court will hold its regular meeting at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 28, at the Keyes Building, 113 W. Beauregard Ave.
