Senate wants voter-verified paper trail in Texas elections; Lubbock County broke promise on such

The Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 9 which, if agreed to and passed by the House, would require electronic voting machines used in Texas produce a paper ballot.

I was on the Secretary of State’s ad hoc committee about these issues when HAVA, the federal Help America Vote Act, was passed which effectively forced the use of electronic voting machines on us. I also, along with an excellent Democratic Party chairman in Lubbock County, co-chaired a committee on choosing electronic voting machines locally.

If you don’t know, it was the element in HAVA related to private voting being open to those with disabilities to the extent of even voting by using a breath-pressure tube for control, that effectively forced most jurisdictions to move to the newer systems.

We fought hard to get machines that provided a voter-verified paper trail but the state, which must certify the equipment, wouldn’t certify a system with the paper trail and staff at the state elections office had open contempt for our desire for such.

The issue hasn’t gone away and other states are now requiring such of voting equipment and Texas may join them.

I’m simply reminded of yet another area where Lubbock County’s old leadership screwed taxpayers.

For no legitimate reason former Commissioner Patti Jones and current Commissioner Bill McCay recently spent millions to replace working equipment, which would have lasted another decade or more easily, with new machines absent the voter-verified paper trail. Yet back when we bought the first electronic equipment, Jones and others on the court promised that we would move to voter-verified paper trail equipment, if such was available which it turned out to be, the next time around. It was just another of many costly lies and could end up costing us millions more.