Collin County voters will have to bubble in paper ballots by hand for the first time in two decades when they hit the polls next week, a switch prompted by President Donald Trump’s call for changes to the elections process amid his unfounded concerns over widespread voter fraud.
County Elections Administrator Kaleb Breaux said he’s seen no evidence of voter fraud in the county elections, but Collin County commissioners voted four months ago to adopt hand-marked paper ballots in an effort to align with a March executive order from the White House, leaving local officials scrambling to implement the change ahead of the Nov. 4 election.
“We are learning some things as we go, building the airplane as we fly,” Breaux told a group of poll workers at a recent training.
“Having to implement it so quickly without fully being able to flesh this out, it’s concerning,” Breaux said. “Those things are challenging, and they definitely bring me some anxieties.”
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Kaleb Breaux speaks during a poll training at the Collin County elections administration office in McKinney, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2025.
Anja Schlein / Special Contributor
Trump’s executive order called for “voting methods that produce a voter-verifiable paper record” to allow voters to check their votes and prevent fraud or mistake.
County Judge Chris Hill was for months the Commissioner’s Court’s sole advocate of hand-marked ballots until Trump’s executive order this spring. In June, the fully Republican court agreed to adopt hand-marked ballots for the November election.
After Trump’s allegations of widespread voter fraud in recent elections, many Texas Republicans have grown more concerned about election security, including in Dallas County, where Republicans decided earlier this year to manually count Election Day ballots during its March primary.
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While voter fraud does happen occasionally in the United States, The Associated Press reports it is generally detectable and rare, according to current and former election administrators of both parties. There’s been no evidence of widespread voter fraud in recent presidential elections.
Breaux said the change to hand-marked ballots in Collin County is costing around $2.3 million.
“This [hand-marked] process is as secure and as transparent as is the previous primary method of marking a ballot in Collin County,” Breaux said in an interview. “There was never a question about the integrity of tabulations and tallies.”
A voting machine at poll training at the Collin County elections administration office in McKinney, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2025.
Anja Schlein / Special Contributor
The county hasn’t used a hand-marked ballot system since at least the early 2000s, Breaux said. Areas under both Republican and Democratic jurisdictions already use hand-marked ballots, including neighboring Denton County.
While some residents have lauded the hand-marked system as more transparent and secure, some are concerned the room for human error and erroneous ballot markings could delay the process.
“It’s backtracking,” said Linda Benson, who has worked at Collin County polls for years. “I think it’s going to be a slower process.”
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Registered voters in Collin County can cast their ballot at any of the county vote centers. When a voter checks in, an election worker will receive a ticket that signals to the printer which page should be printed to produce a ballot that lists the correct contests.
Each polling place will have at least two printers to produce the 19-inch-long paper ballot. Voters will use a pen to bubble in a circle next to their choice. The hand-marked ballots are still tabulated by a machine within the polling place, and are not hand-counted.
The machine will alert to errors like undervotes, overvotes, unreadable marks or a blank ballot. Voters with errors will either get a new ballot or receive their ballot back. There will still be ballot-marking devices for voters with disabilities at every polling location, Breaux said.
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Liz Holland, president of the League of Women Voters of Collin County, believes the county’s change is the result of misinformation about voter fraud and will result in disenfranchisement. The time it will take to fill out ballots by hand, the mistakes voters may make on their ballots and the potential for lines to form could make it harder for voters to cast a ballot.
“We’re not happy about going backwards,” Holland said.
Administrators had just four months to have the change ready amid other changes to curbside voting and a new vendor for the county’s voting system. Breaux hopes the debut is a stress-test ahead of larger elections like the 2026 gubernatorial race.
Poll training at the Collin County elections administration office in McKinney, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2025.
Anja Schlein / Special Contributor
For some voters with concerns, Breaux thinks the act of physically marking a candidate or proposition on the ballot adds clarity to the elections process.
“For those voters, and maybe for our court, having that extra level of transparency was important,” Breaux said. “I’m going to do everything in my power and I owe it to the voters of this county to make this process work.”
Early voting takes place Monday, Oct. 20 to Friday, Oct. 31 and Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 4. A full list of voting locations can be found on Collin County’s website.
Email tips on all things Collin County to lilly.kersh@dallasnews.com.