Remember hand-marked paper ballots? Collin County could bring them back for elections

Collin County could start using hand-marked paper ballots in future elections, but not in November.

The county currently uses voting machines to mark and count ballots. Collin County Judge Chris Hill proposed during a recent commissioners court meeting that the county change the voting method to hand-marked paper ballots that are counted by machine starting in the upcoming election.

“Now it's our turn to step up and continue the integrity of elections here at home,” Hill said.

But that won't happen in November. Hill's motion to make the change before the upcoming election was defeated after county commissioners refused to second his motion. Instead, commissioners opted to instruct staff to use paper ballots in the future, including a possible bond election on the issue to let voters decide.

Claims of election fraud about the 2020 election have been repeatedly discredited. But members of the Collin County chapter of Citizens Defending Freedom, many of whom are also active in the local Republican Party, have spoken about election integrity concerns at Collin County commissioners’ courtroom meetings for years.

The Texas Secretary of State's office has said the elections in Collin County are secure his audit of the 2020 general elections. The control called Collin County “the model for how elections should be run in Texas.”

Hill said he has confidence in Collin County election workers, but that moving to hand-filled ballots would increase voters' confidence in the integrity of the county's elections.

“We have to have a system that earns its own trust, and hand-filled paper ballots move us in that direction,” Hill said.

Sen. Bob Hall, whose district includes a small portion of Collin County, was among the speakers who voiced support for paper ballots in commissioners court during a public comment session that lasted more than two hours. The senator said he plans to sponsor bills related to election integrity in the upcoming legislative session.

Hall said the current election system in Texas is not accountable and transparent. He said moving to paper ballots is the first step toward fixing a broken election system.

“Why in the world would we spend $35,000 on a piece of electronic equipment to do what we can already do, what we learned in third grade and we color within the lines?” Hall said.

But several commissioners shared concerns about the cost and logistics of switching to handwritten paper ballots in November. Commissioner Susan Fletcher said staff estimated it would cost the county between $3.3 million and $4.2 million and would take at least a year to implement.

“I'm not necessarily open to discussions about what we should do in the future, but I don't think it's wise to do that now,” Fletcher said.

The commissioners approved the budget and tax rate for the upcoming fiscal year at the same meeting where Hill proposed switching to paper ballots. Hill voted against the property tax rate and the budget, saying he was opposed to raising taxes and that the budget needed to be cut. But the county judge voted in favor of several items that were added separately to the budget, including funding for 41 new correctional officers at the jail.

Commissioner Darrell Hale said he voted for items added to the budget with the intention of supporting them. Hale also said there was little room for cuts in the proposed budget.

“There were so many things that we left out of this year's budget that the province needs,” he said.

Hill said he voted on the individual merits of the items added to the budget, but opposed the overall cost of the budget. He proposed reducing staff increases to trim the budget. But Fletcher said the increases were necessary to retain staff.

“I want to pay our staff well so that they don't use this as a training opportunity and then go find another job somewhere else once they learn how to do the work here because we're not paying them enough,” she said.

Have a tip? Email Caroline Love at clove@kera.org.

Caroline Love is a Report for America corps member for KERA News.

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