Tarrant County voters will see a change to their ballots in this November’s general election.
On Tuesday, the county’s elections board voted to institute a change to start using ballots with pre-printed sequential serial numbers.
Supporters say the move will secure the results of the 2024 election, but some critics call it an unnecessary expense.
“It makes it easier to audit. It makes it harder to copy,” Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare said of the new ballots.
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“So one of the things that’s going to happen is there’s going to be a set number of ballots that shows up at each polling location.”
A forensic audit of the 2020 general election conducted by the office of the Texas Secretary of State found that Tarrant County held “a quality, transparent election.”
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In past elections, Tarrant County has used a machine voting system that stamps the ballot with a non-sequential string of letters and numbers.
Some election board members believed those tracking numbers would make it harder for election judges to tell if a ballot had been added or gone missing from their allotment to count.
These supporters believed the new sequential serial number system would boost voter confidence in the upcoming presidential election.
A December poll from the Associated Press found that “about a quarter of Republicans had ‘quite a bit’ of confidence that votes in the 2024 election would be counted accurately.”
The same poll found that 46% of US adults believed the same.
Some Tarrant election judges who attended Tuesday’s meeting regarding the sequential serial number proposal spoke in favor of making the change.
“We had problems with the counts because of the packaged ballots, they were always off,” said Linda Ford. “And I feel like if we followed the law with the pre-numbered ballots, it would give us a sense of control.”
Others said ballots in the current system were already traceable.
“I understand that pre-serialized ballots would give people a greater sense of control, but that’s not actually the same thing as security,” said Katherine Cano, an election judge with the Tarrant Early Voting Ballot Board.
The Tarrant County Elections Board eventually voted four to one to switch to ballots with pre-stamped serial numbers for the November general election.
The only vote against the proposal was Tarrant County Democratic Party chair Crystal Gayden, who said the move would cost taxpayers an extra $39,000 a year to buy the specialized ballots.
“I don’t think it’s necessary, and definitely a waste of taxpayer money,” said Gayden. “It is not going to reassure in regards to our elections because there hasn’t been a finding that our elections’ integrity is at stake.”
Some election officials said they believed the extra cost was worth it to reassure voters heading into November.
“We want to make sure that people trust the election process, think it’s fair, think it’s transparent,” said O’Hare. “And this is an extra layer of security that’s going to do that.”
