Some Texas lawmakers want to ban countywide voting on Election Day. Local officials are pushing back.

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More than a dozen Texas counties are fighting a push by some Republican state lawmakers to get rid of a program that allows voters to cast their ballots at any county polling location on Election Day, arguing that the option saves taxpayers millions of dollars and makes voting more convenient.

County officials say it should be up to local leaders and election officials who best understand the needs of their communities to decide whether to offer countywide voting on Election Day.

Two bills have been filed to get rid of the option, which is allowed in 99 counties encompassing more than 80% of the state’s voters. Eliminating it would mean counties would almost certainly have to open, equip and staff more neighborhood voting sites, since Election Day voters would be able to vote only at their assigned precinct. In some counties, available facilities are also difficult to find.

“We want [the lawmakers] to know this is going to cost small counties a lot of money,” said Kirk Frye, a Parmer County commissioner. Parmer County is on the New Mexico border, and many of its 9,800 residents have long commutes to Amarillo or to New Mexico, which makes it harder for them to vote near their home on Election Day. “Countywide polling places are just convenient for our people,” he said.

State Sen. Bob Hall, an Edgewood Republican who has repeatedly filed legislation to eliminate countywide voting, says the program lacks transparency and produces inaccurate vote totals and results that can’t be reconciled. He has also filed a bill that would eliminate the use of the electronic voting equipment necessary to participate in the program. State Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, has also filed similar proposals in the House.

State and local officials have disputed Hall’s assertions about transparency and results, and pointed to the myriad benefits of “vote center” models like Texas’ countywide voting program.

The program allows counties, especially those in rural areas, to expend fewer resources by staffing and equipping fewer polling locations in areas more accessible to voters. If a polling location shuts down — due to loss of power or a natural disaster, for example — voters aren’t limited and can still cast a ballot at any other available location.

Election officials in multiple counties say getting rid of countywide voting would have costly effects on their communities. In Kaufman County, located in Hall’s district, the bill would result in new costs totaling more than $1 million, said the county’s election administrator, Tandi Smith. And that’s just for the additional voting equipment. There would also be ongoing expenses for election workers’ hourly wages, supplies, facility rental fees and other things..

That’s why Kaufman County commissioners in December unanimously passed a resolution in opposition to eliminating the program and the electronic equipment needed to implement it. More than a dozen countries have followed, including Hays in Central Texas, Gregg and Austin counties in East Texas and Parmer County. A dozen more counties are drafting similar resolutions. In addition, election officials in growing counties that are not part of the program told Votebeat they’d like to keep the option of whether or not to use it at the local level.

Frye, the Parmer County commissioner, who is also the vice president of the Texas Association of County Judges and Commissioners, said the organization passed its own resolution opposing the elimination of the program last October. The resolution also seeks more state funds for local elections.

Hall did not respond to Votebeat’s requests for comment or answer questions about whether he’d consider proposals to fund the changes. Toth did not respond to requests for comment.

Vote center model helps counties meet federal voting law

Created in 2003 by an election official in Larimer County, Colorado, the vote center model was designed to meet accessibility requirements stipulated in the Help America Vote Act of 2002. The federal law set aside money to address issues with outdated voting technology and voting access problems after the 2000 presidential election. The requirements were costly and some counties would have had to provide additional voting equipment at hundreds of locations. The vote center model allowed them to offer fewer locations because voters could cast their ballots at any of them.

Texas began offering the option in 2006, after a Republican state representative introduced a bill establishing a pilot program. The bill won bipartisan support; participating counties were required to have electronic poll books and other voter registration management tools necessary to ensure that voters only cast a single ballot. In its most recent report to the Legislature, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office deemed the program successful and said it offers “a way to ensure that voters who plan to vote in the election have an increased opportunity to do so much as with early voting.”

Counties in every part of the state use the program, collectively encompassing roughly 14.9 million voters, or 83%, of the state’s registered voters, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

In East Texas’ Austin County, a rural community, many of the more than 30,000 residents commute east to Houston or north to Brenham for work. Others also travel west and south of the county daily. Countywide voting on Election Day has allowed election officials there to have polling locations in almost every corner of the county that any resident can use. For example, a voter who lives in Sealy, in the south of the county, and works in Houston can access a polling location on their way to and back along the I-10 corridor at a community hall. A voter from Bellville, the county seat, traveling an hour west to LaGrange can also find a polling location on the way.

A lawmaker campaigns against the program 

The program’s most vocal critics, proponents of hand-counting ballots, have for years asserted that electronic voting equipment can be manipulated by election officials. In 2023, Hall was a featured speaker in an organized push to eliminate electronic voting equipment and to instead hand count ballots — a method experts say is more costly and more prone to errors and inaccuracies in vote counts.

That year, during the legislative session, Hall first filed a bill to get rid of the vote center program. It passed the Senate but did not advance in the House. This year, Hall is a member of the Senate State Affairs Committee, tasked with considering election and voting legislation. It’s very likely Hall’s legislation will again get a hearing in committee, though the program’s popularity among voters and county officials could weaken its chances in the House, said Daniel Griffith, senior director of policy at the Secure Democracy Foundation.

Most recently, critics of the program have tried to link Texas’ ballot secrecy problem to the use of the program. State officials and local election officials say that problem isn’t related to the use of the program. Rather, they said it stems from Texas’ push to make almost all election records public, allowing researchers, in some limited instances, to cross-reference different public records and find a specific voter’s ballot image. Even if the program were eliminated, that would still be possible under some circumstances.

Hall has publicly said the program has led to “unexplainable inconsistencies” in vote totals and prevents totals from being audited by individual precincts. Election officials say he is wrong about that, and current law requires them to reconcile totals and have the ability to produce reports of vote totals by precinct.

This year, Hall also filed legislation to eliminate electronic pollbooks — which counties are required to have in order to offer countywide voting — and voting machines currently in use by a majority of counties from the process. He has voiced support for eliminating the early voting period and having voters cast ballots in person only, and only at their assigned precinct.

Costs would rise for equipment, labor and more

Jennifer Briggs, the elections administrator in Gregg County, a community with nearly 80,000 registered voters, said if the state approves eliminating the current voting equipment the county uses to participate in the program, more than $1 million in taxpayer dollars would go to waste.

In addition, paper poll books and paper ballots would require additional storage, with sophisticated climate control that the county currently lacks.

Briggs estimates the county could be on the hook for an additional $800,000 — which would include new equipment, materials, wages for election workers and additional polling locations, and other things.

Election administrators in some counties are already struggling to comply with legislation passed in 2023, which required them to increase the number of polling locations they operate and to increase the number of hours and days of early voting. Some have had trouble finding public buildings that comply with access requirements for voting sites. In other areas, where funding can’t stretch to pay for the additional required hours, election officials have had to shut down early voting sites, resulting in less access for voters. Eliminating the program would add to that burden.

In Austin County, Kim Rinn, the tax assessor-collector and election official, said she’s concerned that going back to precinct voting will increase the number of provisional ballots cast, because people who would have to go to a specific polling site could get confused and go to the wrong location.

“And those are not going to count,” Rinn said, because ballots are rejected if they are not cast at the right location. Austin County has been part of the program since 2022. Rinn said voters are used to it and it has helped run smoother local elections and ease voter confusion.

She added that eliminating the program could also have an impact on the budgets of school districts and cities in the county as they run their own elections. They, too, would have to increase the number of workers, equipment and locations to staff if the program were to go away, she said.

“I wish lawmakers would take a look at everyone and not just folks in their districts,” Rinn said. “Every county has a reason for doing what they do.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

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