What if we remove electronic poll books from our elections? How much will we have to change our voting infrastructure to remove them? Is Texas ready to go back to paper? We will endeavor to address these questions and more.
Texas still has counties that never adopted electronic poll books. If you live in one of those counties you don’t need to worry, just continue using those paper poll books. Other counties have a hybrid system where they check in through a machine but still sign with ink on a sticker that is printed and placed in a physical poll book. The rest of us have become accustomed to walking into the polling location and checking in on an iPad or tablet. We scan our ID and sign on the screen with our finger or the little plastic stylus. These are the counties that some say are most at risk.
The 2020 election ignited a loud cry for election reform. Trust in our election systems was at an all-time low. Election hacking was alleged all over the nation. It began a push from some election integrity activists to remove machines altogether. Ballot marking devices, scanners, and electronic poll books are all potentially on the chopping block.
Of course, no election is perfect and elections were stolen long before machines were introduced, but machines didn’t fix all of those problems either. Election integrity requires constant vigilance and the weighing of risks.
Of all the machines, however, electronic poll books seem to possess the highest risk factor, a connection to the internet. A working connection means a vulnerability to hacking while a broken connection means people could potentially vote in more than one location. Yet many of our 254 counties in Texas have voting systems that are dependent on these machines. Remember, each county can choose from a variety of systems so each county is somewhat unique. The situations described may not directly apply to your county.
*Disclaimers*
This document is just a guide. Advancing Integrity is not a legal firm and cannot give legal advice. Always refer to the Texas Election Code, Texas Secretary of State, and your County Elections Office.
Early Voting
If your county has traditionally had only one location for Early Voting you are good to go for paper poll books. All voters go to the same place to vote so there can be just one book that checks them in and no communication is needed between polling locations. You may skip to the next section.
If your county has more than one Early Voting location, keep reading because your county will likely have to go down to only one location or use electronic poll books. The exceptions are a county with a population over 3.3 million in a countywide election or a county over 1 million in a primary and even then, the number of locations is limited.
Early voting in person follows a different set of statues than Election Day and they are mainly laid out in Chapter 85 of the Election Code. Polling locations are the main early voting place, or a permanent branch location, and temporary branch polling places as needed. Section 85.006 states, “any voter who is entitled to vote an early voting ballot by personal appearance may do so at any branch polling place in the territory served by the early voting clerk.” This means that precinct-based polling does not exist for Early Voting. So, polling locations must be able to communicate with each other to ensure voters are not casting a ballot more than once by visiting multiple locations.
When Early Voting first began it was intended for only those voters who would not be able to vote on Election Day, but now we have an average of 60% of voters casting a vote early. Expecting that many voters to vote in one location is highly impractical for our larger counties. Imagine a county like Williamson that had about 400,000 registered voters at the time of the 2024 Primary Election, of which about 55,000 of them voted in the Primary and about 24,000 of them voted early. That is a massive number of people to process through one location. The county would have to rent a large enough location to have a table for each of the 176 precincts, each with its own paper poll book. Some of the smaller precincts could be combined, but that would still leave at least 110 check-in tables that would have to be staffed. It’s possible, but it would be a logistical nightmare.
Also, once you give people more convenience it is difficult to take it back. Using the example of Williamson County, you would be asking people to go from about 20 locations to just one. What was a 10-20 minute drive is now 40-60 minutes depending on traffic. You must win them over to the why of it or have county officials with the strength to stand up to angry constituents and the willingness to risk defeat in the next election. Another thing to consider is the ire of the candidates and potential lawsuits. Imagine you have two candidates running in a countywide race and each has a strong base of voters in a different part of the county. If there is only one location and it is in the middle of one candidate’s base of voters and 40 minutes from the other’s base, that could be seen as an unfair advantage. WIth 50% of the vote coming in early at that one location, the scales could be artificially tipped in the favor of that first candidate.
Until we have legislation that changes the early voting process, it is impractical for large counties to eliminate electronic poll books. We can advocate for eliminating early voting like Alabama, New Hampshire, and Mississippi who never had it in the first place, or require an excuse to vote early in person, similar to voting by mail, like Kentucky, or we can simply finish what Senator Bob Hall started in SB 2753. Sen. Hall’s initial draft would have put early voting under Election Day statutes, allowing for precinct-based voting throughout. No matter which way counties choose, it is important to remember to work to change the culture of voting from being focused on convenience to focused on integrity.
Election Day
Unlike Early Voting, Election Day can be conducted at the precinct-level. If your county has not adopted countywide polling and voters still vote only in their precinct, you are already set up to use paper poll books, if you choose. If your county is a part of the countywide polling program you will have to transition back to precinct-based to use paper poll books. Remember, once you give people more convenience it is difficult to take it back so you will have to do some convincing. Read more about precinct-based vs. countywide HERE.
Reporting
County Elections Offices are required to post Early Voting Rosters at the end of each day of early voting. These are lists of each person who voted that day. With electronic poll books it doesn’t take much effort to download the list and post it onto the website. This process is much more difficult, however, with paper poll books. Each location must keep a handwritten poll list of each voter casting a vote that day, in addition to the poll book or as part of a combination form. These lists must then be manually entered into the records at the Elections Office requiring much more time and effort. They are also subject to a high probability for human error.
The poll lists from Election Day will typically be just as long as all of Early Voting combined, but will have to be entered all at once. This can be a daunting task for large counties and it will cause delays in reporting and be subject to human error. This is not to say that electronic poll books will not have errors, they do, this is just to point out potential issues that must be considered.
Human Error
The potential for machine malfunction must be weighed against the potential for human error. Both are possible before the election as both methods could be compromised by uploading or printing the lists incorrectly. Of course a paper poll book cannot lose power or connection to the internet and shut down, but it does have disadvantages.
Electronic poll books have an advantage over paper poll books by decreasing human error in the check-in process. The electronic tablet walks the election worker through the process helping to ensure that steps aren’t missed. Without them the worker could forget to ask voters to verify their address, to ensure any assistants complete the proper paperwork, and so on. Long, busy days will tax the mind of anyone and training isn’t always as rigorous as needed.
You may not see this as a reason to stick with the electronic poll books, but it is something that you must consider. Printing an easy to read check-in checklist for the election workers to have constantly visible would be a great addition when choosing a paper poll book. Failure to complete certain steps and forms could land election workers in quite a bit of hot water and could keep the location from reconciling.
Harvesting
While eliminating electronic poll books may prevent hacking, paper poll books make old-fashioned vote harvesting easier. Imagine you are someone of weak morals who believes the ends justify the means and is willing to cheat to get your candidates elected. You are the Presiding Judge at a polling location on Election Day and your fellow election workers are your friends who share your same views.
Now imagine there is a paper poll list sitting on the table with hundreds of names of people who have not yet voted and are not likely to vote in the final hours of the day. You may even have your own list of unlikely voters to aid in your task. You now have the opportunity to vote for as many people as you think it will take to win. Maybe you just vote for a dozen or two, taking turns forging the handwriting. No one will know, and there isn’t a machine that will show when all those votes were cast. It is a very tempting scenario and one that has been used in the past.
Now imagine you aren’t that bold, but you are willing to look the other way when a busload of people come in to vote without IDs. There isn’t a scanner verifying that an ID was present, so how would you get caught? With electronic poll books, some systems allow Elections Administrators to view the percentage of scanned IDs in real time so they can see if the scan rate drops below normal, indicating human error or potential fraud.
Paper poll books do have one advantage here, accountability. If the harvesting is happening inside the polling location it narrows the list of possible suspects. Hacking could come from anywhere. The key to stopping the in-person harvesting is ensuring party parity. The minority party must have at least two people present, one as alternate judge and one as a clerk or poll watcher. Having two or more helps when one has to step out of the room or is distracted. Distractions happen easily through voters with complex issues or curbside voting.
A switch to paper poll books may be more secure in some ways, but less secure in others. The key is to find a balance and plug the holes where necessary. Removing machines is not a magic wand that fixes the election. There will always be people trying to cheat and we must always be watching and thinking of ways to stop them. In this case it requires more training, more vetting of election workers, and more poll watchers.
Hybrids
There is a system that is a compromise between electronic poll books and paper poll lists. These systems combine the two and result in an actual ink on paper signature in a physical book. The voter checks in electronically and a paper sticker prints out from a machine with the voter’s name, VUID, other pertinent information, and a space for a signature. That sticker is then placed into a large paper poll book and the voter signs it. There is now an electronic record of the voter check-in as well as a physical record. The result is quick reporting that is auditable through a public information request. This system also has the advantage of not having all of the names of the registered voters pre-printed so it cuts down on the harvesting aspect of the paper poll book.
Electronic poll books can also be made more secure with paper poll lists. These are simply handwritten lists of voters that utilize carbon-less paper that allows them to produce multiple copies. A clerk would check in a voter electronically and then write their name and Voter Unique Identifier (VUID) on the form. These forms could then be checked later to ensure that there has been no tampering with the electronic list of voters. If someone tried to manipulate the electronic rolls to remove names and allow voters to vote again or mark others as having voted when they haven’t, their fraud would be caught by checking the handwritten lists.
To be clear, all voting methods are vulnerable to human error and fraud. Therefore we must ensure that we are mitigating the dangers of whichever method we choose.