Voting machines stand ready at the Tarrant County Election Commission on Friday, Sept. 23, 2022, in Fort Worth.
Amanda McCoy
amccoy@star-telegram.com
Tarrant County poll workers told county commissioners about problems they had with the voting machines during the March primary election. Many said hand ballots are the solution.
The 2026 primary election was Amy Woodward’s 20th election as a judge, but she said her enthusiasm is diminishing because of issues with the machines.
Between having to reboot machines and spoil ballots with machine-inflicted errors, Woodward said the modernized processes have caused undue stress on poll workers.
Each of the poll workers complaining about machines called for the county to switch to hand-marked ballots or hand-counted ballots.
After the Texas Senate District 9 run-off election in January, Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig got approval from the secretary of state to run a hand count audit. The election offered a unique opportunity to run the audit, Ludwig said, because significantly fewer ballots were cast compared to most other elections in the county.
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The audit found that the machines were more accurate than the people manually counting votes.
At the Tuesday meeting, Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare asked Ludwig if the concerns raised by the poll workers indicated more machine issues in the primary election than usual.
Ludwig said he couldn’t decisively say there were more issues because primary elections require more machines than other elections, meaning there is a higher likelihood of problems. Based on early data, Ludwig said there were more spoiled ballots than usual and his staff is looking into it.
In the March 3 election, the Republican ballot was two pages long whereas the Democratic ballot was one page. The two pages may have been the source of the issue, Ludwig estimated.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Rachel Royster is a news and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, specifically focused on Tarrant County. She joined the newsroom after interning at the Austin American-Statesman, the Waco Tribune-Herald and Capital Community News in DC. A Houston native and Baylor grad, Rachel enjoys traveling, reading and being outside. She welcomes any and all news tips to her email.