GEORGETOWN — More than 75% of registered voters in Williamson County turned out to vote in the 2020 presidential election, but according to Citizens Defending Freedom, problems with the county’s electronic voting machines are threatening to keep voters away from the polls, and threatening the sanctity of constitutional rights. This week, the county took a step toward correcting those issues.
“After nearly a year of diligent advocacy, CDF has successfully championed the implementation of pre-printed, consecutively numbered ballots for the upcoming November 2024 elections,” Marcia Watson, executive director of Williamson County Citizens Defending Freedom, announced at a press conference on the steps of Williamson County Courthouse Tuesday.
CDF is working to return voting to an organic state that relies completely on humans – no more electronic sign-in books or electronic ballots. They won the first step June 24 when the Texas Secretary of State issued an advisory on ballot numbering requirements.
“I have personally seen with my own eyes ballot problems with voters getting incorrect ballot styles and voters seeing their ballots flipped on our equipment here in Williamson County, and there are affidavits that have been filed that state so,” said Watson. “We need to get the machines out. The machines are the problem in the State of Texas.”
Less than an hour before the press conference, Elections Administrator Bridgette Escobedo told county commissioners she was recommending the switch to the sequentially numbered ballots. She will present her recommendation to the County Election Board, and Judge Bill Gravell said that as part of that board he will be voting to proceed with the change. “I am strongly in favor of Williamson County using consecutively numbered ballots in the November 2024 election, and will give my full support to our elections administrator in order to make this happen. The right to ballot secrecy is an integral part of our voting system which we cannot allow to be compromised,” Gravell said.
Escobedo said the cost for the preprinted consecutively numbered ballots is approximately three cents. She will be ordering 431,800 ballots, one for every registered voter, so the cost will be almost $13,000.
Voters at the polls this November should see no real impact to the process. The difference will be that rather than having a computer-generated number on each voter’s ballot, which is stored in the same computer as the voter’s identification information from when they sign in, the ballot will have a pre-printed number on the back. Voters can write down their number and be able to check online that their vote was counted correctly, but there will be no electronic tracking of a numbered ballot to a voter.
Because the numbers are consecutive, poll-watchers will know immediately how many votes have been placed and be able to account for all ballots.
Watson said the next step for the group is to push the legislature for precinct-level voting rather than county-level, meaning people would have to vote only in their own precinct. This would go a long way toward eliminating questions of people voting more than once, while ensuring every voter received the ballot appropriate to their area, she said.
Laurie Gallagher with Tally Texas, a non-profit organization that petitions county commissioners court to adopt hand marked and hand-counted paper ballots, said the failings of the current voting system can have far-reaching repercussions.
“If people have been disenfranchised, we don’t get our best and our brightest running for election. They no longer participate and no longer have confidence in our representative form of government,” Gallagher said.
“Williamson County is one of 96 counties that have adopted a fully electronic voting system. It provides no reliable records to recount and no reliable records to audit. There is no secrecy of ballot and it does not prevent voters from voting on the wrong ballot. There is no way to know how many voters are getting the wrong ballot,” she said. “It’s a foreign attacker’s dream.”
Laurie Gallagher with Tally Texas says paper ballots are safer for national security. Photo by Edie Zuvanich
