Collin County moves to hand-marked paper ballots for all elections amid concerns over voter turnout
Collin County residents will need to use a pen to vote since the Commissioners' Court has mandated hand-marked ballots for all elections beginning in November.
It's a decision that local Democrats said is designed to discourage their voters.
The state-of-the-art voting machines haven't even had time to get old in Collin County, but they are no longer legal after a federal executive order earlier this year related to election integrity prohibited machines that print ballots with bar codes.
"With the elimination of bar codes, our equipment was not able to produce a ballot that didn't have a bar code on it," said Darrell Hale, Collin County Commissioner Pct. 3.
Hale said it's the reason for a decision to convert future elections to hand-marked paper ballots.
But Collin County Democratic Party leaders say that method will discourage participation among their voters.
"And/or they may just abandon their efforts," said Jeremy Sutka, the Collin County Democratic Party Chairman. "Busy mother who, you know, just has your kids is trying to get in. Now, the polling place is five minutes. It's going to be a lot harder to do now. So between that and sowing distrust in the whole process and saying that there's something wrong when there isn't, that just discourages people, thinking 'my vote is not going to count anyways.'"
Paper must be marked by a black ink ballpoint pen, which will be provided at voting centers, but county leaders say optical reading machines will still count them.
"It could be a little bit longer to actually conduct your vote. But we will be able to have more voting machines inside," Hale said. "There's many voting systems around the state that already do this."
"So it's going to be a disaster," said Sutka. "Long results for human error. It's a disaster all around for democracy now."
The county is looking at mothballing their voting machines until leaders find a way to dispose of them.
It will cost at least $2.3 million to purchase equipment as Collin County, with 750,000 registered voters, becomes one of the largest in Texas to require hand-marked ballots.
