Collin County voters will use hand-marked paper ballots in November, mostly replacing digital ballot-marking machines.<\/p>\n
COLLIN COUNTY, Texas \u2014 Voters heading to the polls in Collin County this election season in November will notice a return to the past: hand-marked paper ballots.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe call it ballot-on-demand,\u201d said Kaleb Breaux, Elections Administrator for Collin County.<\/p>\n
For the first time since the early 2000s, voters will manually fill in ovals on full-sized paper ballots, replacing the widespread use of digital ballot-marking machines. While digital ballot marking options are still available, they must now be specifically requested. Also new are the devices used to check in voters.<\/p>\n
The shift was influenced in part by voter feedback and action from the County Commissioners Court. County Judge Chris Hill attempted several times to push forward hand-marked paper ballots. The Court finally approved it in June.<\/p>\n
It is important to note that no voting irregularities have been found in Collin County elections in recent memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe court, after hearing from a number of voters over a period of time, I think they feel like [paper ballot marking] is a more transparent act,\u201d Breaux said.<\/p>\n
He added that while the decision aligns with former President Trump\u2019s executive orders on election integrity, local officials have emphasized transparency and reliability as the driving factors.<\/p>\n
Friday marked the state-mandated Public Test Day, where members of the public, political parties, ballot board and city officials observed the system being tested\u2014from check-in to tabulation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make sure the voter completely fills in the oval so the [ballot scanner] can register the vote,\u201d Breaux said.<\/p>\n
Ballots were intentionally marked with overvotes, undervotes, and faint ovals to test the scanner\u2019s accuracy.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re wanting to make sure it\u2019s catching all of those things,\u201d Breaux explained.<\/p>\n
The tabulator flagged each irregularity as expected, with alerts for unreadable or conflicting marks according to Breaux.<\/p>\n
Despite the changes, Breaux says the updated process is not necessarily more secure\u2014it\u2019s just another reliable option.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s any more or any less safe than what we were doing. I think that we still offer ballots to voters that are tabulated properly, efficiently, and in a transparent manner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Collin County has reported no recent voting irregularities, including during Friday\u2019s testing. If you receive a \u201cthank you for voting\u201d message on the tabulator screen after submitting your ballot, your vote has been successfully counted.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Collin County voters will use hand-marked paper ballots in November, mostly replacing digital ballot-marking machines. COLLIN COUNTY, Texas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":{"0":"post-347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-plano","8":"tag-plano","9":"tag-plano-headlines","10":"tag-plano-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}