WILCO – Security for voted ballots and memory sticks being stored in the Williamson County Inner Loop Annex, 301 SE Inner Loop, Suite 104, Georgetown, after leaving official polling places has some citizens concerned about the potential for election fraud.
Votes on ballots and electronic media from city and school district elections in Taylor, Hutto and throughout the county are processed and stored at the Annex.
“My position is it doesn’t matter what election, the law should be followed. We should be transparent in our election processes so the people can have trust in the system,” said Laura Pressley, founder of True Texas Elections, LLC.
Pressley ran for a place on the Florence Independent School District board of trustees and was unsuccessful. She was one of four people who addressed the Williamson County Commissioners during the May 9 meeting.
At issue are changes to the Texas Election Code, which took effect in December 2021. Section 127.1232(b) now requires a video recording system to be in place capturing all areas containing voted ballots from the time the ballots are delivered to the central counting station until the local canvass of election results.
Chris Davis, elections administrator for Williamson County, said his department added three temporary surveillance cameras leading from the building entry to the early voting storage room, in addition to the permanent cameras in each storage room. The storage room cameras are still recording and can be monitored at www.wilco.org/peekaboo.
“We received an email and verbal complaints from people who were under the mistaken belief that the camera coverage we supplied on May 2 was insufficient,” Davis said. “It covered all areas. They claimed wrongly there were areas not covered when they clearly were, and that it was not being livestreamed when it clearly was.”
Photos that Pressley supplied to County Commissioners contradicted Davis’ claim of full coverage, allegedly showing an entrance into the storage room leading from a hallway that was not visible on the cameras.
Pressley said that she and Pct. 3 Commissioner Valerie Covey met with Davis before the elections to discuss adding the video surveillance along the transit routes from the front of the building to the secure storage as required.
“Chris Davis did a good job at putting cameras other places, but there was one hallway that didn’t have it and it should have,” Pressley said. “I don’t know why it happened, but that back hallway, where ballots were coming in to the central counting area, was not under surveillance. We appreciate the work that was done but it just didn’t meet the criteria.”
The wording on the election code may be subject to different interpretations. Pressley believes the code requires additional video surveillance for both early voting and election day returns, but the additional cameras were not operational for election day ballot deliveries.
Davis says that the code does not apply to Election Day returns because on that day, authorized poll watchers are allowed into the building to follow the ballot media from delivery through to storage or anywhere it goes. “Poll watchers are not allowed into the building for the early voting ballot delivery, so we added these temporary cameras based on the request of Laura Pressley and her group. On Tuesday, the poll watchers were only allowed at the front door dropoff, but they could follow the boxes on livestream video,” Davis said.
Additional concerns presented by Pressley and others were that a corner of the storage room is not in view of the camera, the livestream video allegedly had a seven-minute delay, and there were times when the storage room camera seemed to turn off.
Davis said that the livestream delay was only the normal amount that a viewer will experience when watching a live video over a streaming channel, and that the issue with the camera is a malfunction they are working to repair.
He also pointed out that the cameras are not the only security method in use.
“These bins are locked with numbered seals at the polling place, and those seals are maintained unless there are authorized reasons to go into these bins. We can always prove these seals are the same as when they left the polling places,” he said.
Davis said he intends to continue the use of video streaming for early voting ballot returns in future elections.
“I am grateful for the cameras Chris Davis did set up,” Pressley said. “But the election code is the minimal requirements. There’s so much more that could be done to ensure transparency and security.”
