With city and school elections approaching, over 60 Texas counties are facing a critical issue: replacing their electronic pollbooks, a key piece of voting equipment that is no longer certified. The decertification follows errors during the November election, where thousands of voters in Dallas County received incorrect ballots due to glitches with the e-pollbook software from Election Systems & Software (ES&S). County officials are now grappling with the decision of using ES&S's updated software, which may not be certified in time, or switching to a different vendor, a costly endeavor.
With city and school elections just a few months away, election officials in more than 60 Texas counties are scrambling to replace a key piece of voting equipment that’s no longer in service: the electronic pollbooks they use to check voters in at the polls.
State officials have offered grants to affected counties to offset some of the cost of switching to a new vendor, but some county officials say they won’t be enough. The electronic pollbooks are synced with the voter rolls. Once a voter checks in at a polling location, election officials use them to determine which version of the ballot the voter is supposed to receive, with the selection of local races that corresponds to their address.
Texas has tested and certified versions of ES&S’s e-pollbook since 2020, most recently in August, just a few months before the November problems.includes testing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology lab, physical examination of the devices, and what’s called a functional examination, where state officials put the devices through a test of specific functions, using a database of fictional test voters.
Dallas County elections administrator Heider Garcia said no amount of additional poll worker training could have fully prevented the problem.
TEXAS ELECTIONS VOTING EQUIPMENT POLLBOOKS ELECTION SYSTEMS & SOFTWARE CERTIFICATION VOTER REGISTRATION
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