As Tarrant County residents head to the polls during early voting, they might notice some changes from the last presidential election.
Their ballots, for example, now have preprinted sequential serial numbers; previously, ballots were stamped with a nonsequential string of letters and numbers by a voting machine. After they check in with a poll worker, voters receive a receipt with the phone number for , an entity that didn鈥檛 exist in 2020.
Those changes are two announced by County Judge Tim O鈥橦are less than a week before early voting began.
鈥淭arrant County is committed to secure elections and fostering confidence in the election results,鈥� O鈥橦are wrote in a news release.
Not all of the changes are new; multiple were in place for previous local or state elections. Election experts interviewed by the Fort Worth Report say a majority of the practices announced by O鈥橦are are common sense strategies to ensure election security.
鈥淚 think overall, these measures highlight the pressures that election officials are under to respond to heightened scrutiny,鈥� Will Adler, associate director of the Elections Project at the , said. 鈥淢any of the measures seem like they鈥檙e mostly doubling down on the measures that already exist.鈥�
Among those measures are enhanced training for election judges and clerks; procedures ensuring proper sealing of ballot bags; and improved chain of custody procedures for ballot bags, election judge paperwork, ballot storage box keys and provisional ballots. Chain of custody refers to the process or paper trail documenting the control or transfer of equipment and materials, such as voting machines or ballots, according to the .
鈥淐hain of custody is one of the most important principles of safe and secure election administration,鈥� Adler said. 鈥淢ost election officials do a great job. I know Tarrant County has done a good job in the past of maintaining a chain of custody, but if they have ideas for how to enhance or improve the chain of custody, that鈥檚 awesome.鈥�
Emily French, the policy director at and a former voting rights attorney, also praised the cybersecurity checks announced by O鈥橦are.
鈥淚f I talk to an election official, that鈥檚 something that I鈥檓 recommending as well,鈥� she said.
But the two most noticeable changes for voters 鈥� the creation of an elections integrity task force and the 鈥� concerned some experts.
French said she wants to see Texas elections run as safely and securely as possible. But in her view, elections integrity task forces don鈥檛 help accomplish that mission.
鈥淲hen I see an election integrity task force that has a phone number asking for suspicious election-related activity, what that looks like to me is people turning against their neighbors and accusing them of bad acting that simply doesn鈥檛 happen in Texas, at least not enough to need a hotline about it,鈥� she said.
The by O鈥橦are, Sheriff Bill Waybourn and District Attorney Phil Sorrells, all Republicans, in February 2023. At the time, the trio said it was intended to show residents the county took election integrity concerns seriously.
From its inception to June 2024, the task force received 82 voter fraud complaints. Of those, zero resulted in criminal charges.
Tarrant County has been held up on the statewide level as an example of a well-run, secure elections system. An previously legitimized elections in Tarrant County. At the time, auditors said the small amount of voter fraud revealed by the audit would not have affected the results of the election.
Adler said while it鈥檚 important for voters to know who to contact if they see something untoward at a polling location, overhyping the possibility of voter fraud in a state where it鈥檚 incredibly rare can be harmful.
He also noted there is a potential for prenumbered ballots to decrease elections security rather than increasing it, depending on how an elections office rolls them out. He posed a hypothetical scenario where all sequentially numbered ballots in a polling place are placed in a stack.
鈥淪omeone could be in the polling place watching the order that voters come in to cast and receive a ballot, and then they could potentially later reconstruct, based on those numbers, exactly how everybody who walked into the polling place voted,鈥� Adler said.
O鈥橦are said the switch to prenumbered ballots was a top request from constituents, and added that it would help with trust in elections. When the county approved the switch to prenumbered ballots along party lines in April, county officials said they would mix up the ballots and lay them out on the table to help preserve vote secrecy. At the Charles F. Griffin Subcourthouse Oct. 21, a Fort Worth Report journalist noted ballots were laid out on the table rather than stacked.
Whitney Quesenbery, executive director of the , questioned whether the county鈥檚 rollout of a in combination with the prenumbered ballots could enable voter identification. Tarrant County became the first county in Texas to implement the ballot verifier tool, following . It allows residents to search for and view ballot images.
鈥淚t offers transparency, but can also risk voter privacy, depending on what they include in the image or metadata,鈥� Quesenbery said.
The rollout of the ballot verifier tool in Tarrant came after Texas lawmakers passed House Bill 5180 in 2023, which allowed public access to ballot images and original voted ballots 61 days after an election.
Votebeat and the Texas Tribune reported that in certain instances, those ballot images . Tarrant County Election Administrator Clint Ludwig, who is running his first presidential election in the county after taking over in 2023, previously said his office would in smaller precincts in order to protect ballot secrecy.
One change noted by O鈥橦are, placing a live-stream camera in the Ballot Board storage room, became required after lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 of all areas containing voted ballots until the local canvass of election results is completed. Residents interested in viewing the live streams can .
Adler cautioned that while this kind of transparency sounds like a good idea, it should also be accompanied by clear explanations to residents about what they鈥檙e seeing. This is called contextual transparency, he said.
鈥淲e鈥檝e seen in the past that context-free live streaming of ballot facilities can be used to tell all sorts of stories,鈥� he said. 鈥淪ometimes you can鈥檛 even really see anything particularly informative on there. So sometimes people who are trying to cast doubt on how elections are administered can take that footage and weave a tale with it.鈥�
Adler said while there may be some issues with individual changes, the practice of announcing those changes publicly is a good one.
鈥淚 think it鈥檚 a really good thing for election officials to do this sort of thing, to highlight the changes that they鈥檙e making to make sure that people can trust the results of the election,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 think that鈥檚 really important.鈥�
Irrespective of any specific changes, French said she always recommends residents poke around the county elections website to double and . And if residents have any questions or concerns, Common Cause, along with other organizations in the , offers a free nonpartisan voter hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE. Residents can also reach the Texas Secretary of State鈥檚 elections division at 512-463-5650.
This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.