Texas Tribune
A Texas county responds to demands for ballot hand-counts
by By Natalia Contreras, Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, The Texas Tribune – 2024-04-23 05:00:00
SUMMARY: The Texas Tribune's newsletter highlights ongoing election integrity debates in Brazos County, Texas, where residents, influenced by election conspiracy theorists, demand a switch to hand-counting ballots, citing unfounded claims of fraud with electronic voting machines. County officials have tried to reassure the public by extending audits and additional hand counts without finding discrepancies. Some skeptics, like Walter Daughterity, continue to promote misinformation, despite the county judge affirming the system's certification. To further address concerns, the county agreed to use preprinted sequentially numbered ballot papers costing an extra $14,000, despite the measure's potential to increase costs and compromise ballot secrecy. The Tribune notes this coverage is supported by Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization.
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In Brazos County, suspicions about elections burst into the open last fall, just weeks after a visit from an out-of-state group calling for ballots to be hand-counted.
“Everything seems great. But if you study this, you'll find that it's possible to pre-program electronic voting machines and make it do whatever you want,” one resident said at a commissioners court meeting last November, without evidence to support the claims.
“Ever since these machines came along, I've heard nothing but accusations of fraud,” said another resident. “I am asking you to investigate. Something was wrong in the 2020 election. Voting machines do only what they're programmed to do.”
Similar comments continued to pour in for months — at meetings, in emails to county officials, and through public record requests to the county elections department — from people who insisted that the best answer is for counties to ditch voting equipment altogether and to hand count ballots.
County leaders and election officials have since repeatedly tried to assure residents that elections in Brazos are safe and accurate. They've invited skeptics to help recount ballots themselves. They're spending more money and investing more time to accommodate the residents' demands for changes, even if they think the changes won't make elections any more secure.
Still, in Brazos, as in other counties, election officials foresee no end to the demands from far-right activists who allege that Texas elections are tainted by fraud, even as the Republican candidates they favor win a lot of them.
So officials continue to work with the concerned citizens, and shoulder new costs, to head off what they see as the even bigger burden of a mandatory hand count.
In Brazos, the latest attempt to appease proponents of hand counts will cost the county an additional $14,000 for the November election, a recurring expense that will grow over time, said county Elections Administrator Trudy Hancock.
The cost is for a special kind of ballot paper that comes preprinted with sequential serial numbers, starting with 1. Voting fraud activists have demanded this kind of paper for years, arguing that it would help officials detect and prevent double-voting.
Such instances of fraud are rare, and Texas already has systems in place to prevent it.
Experts say the preprinted numbering could threaten voters' ballot secrecy, so Brazos election officials will have to take even more steps to secure the vote.
And with the preprinted paper, surplus stock cannot be used in later elections, Hancock said. So in the long run, it'll likely end up costing the county more.
“Say that we have 20,000 pieces of paper that we don't use, you have to add the total cost of that 20,000 pieces of paper,” Hancock said. “We cannot reuse it. We'd have to store that paper for 22 months and then shred it. It's useless.”
Misinformation affects push for hand counts
Brazos County, home to College Station and Texas A&M University, has about 128,000 registered voters. Election officials here are among several across the state who have heard demands from far-right activists to switch from electronic voting equipment to hand-counting, a method that has been proven to be less accurate, more costly, and far less secure than electronic tabulating machines.
In some cases, the activists have prevailed over objections from county leaders. In the Texas Hill Country, Gillespie County Republicans hand counted ballots during the March 5 primary and kept finding errors in vote aggregations.
In Brazos, the movement grew after a group of election conspiracy theorists came to town questioning the validity of electronic voting equipment and promoting hand counts. At a public event, which made the rounds across Texas counties last year, speakers promoted their ideas based on election misinformation.
Some Republicans began to echo those concerns at commissioner court meetings. In October, the county commissioners sat through a presentation by Brazos resident Walter Daughterity, a retired computer science professor at Texas A&M University and ally of election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell. Daughterity falsely claimed Brazos' voting machines are connected to the internet and that the equipment is not certified by federal officials. Daughterity proposed shuttering the electronic voting equipment and to hand count ballots instead.
Daughterity did not respond to Votebeat's questions about whether he has any experience working or administering elections in Brazos or anywhere else. Instead he linked to his “expert witness declarations'' in the lawsuit filed by failed Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake. Trial and appellate courts in Arizona have dismissed her claims of election malfeasance.
At Daughterity's presentation, Brazos County Judge Duane Peters, defended the county's voting system and assured those who attended that it is certified, citing approval to use it from the Texas secretary of state. Peters, a Republican, has been a leader in Brazos County for over a decade.
Brazos County commissioners never considered a formal measure to ditch the county's voting equipment and adopt hand counting. After the November election, however, the county expanded its state-mandated partial manual counts in response to the concerns of some residents, including Daughterity.
Done after each election, the partial manual count is a hand count of races from either 1% of a county's precincts or three precincts — whichever is greater — to verify the accuracy of the results tabulated by the voting equipment. The Texas Secretary of State's Office designates which races and precincts must be hand counted and then notifies county election officials.
Hancock said some residents didn't like that state officials choose which races and precincts are to be hand counted.
“Their theory is that at the state level, they know in which precincts we have altered the numbers,” Hancock said. “So they think that since the state knows that, that they wouldn't send us those locations to count.”
So Hancock asked secretary of state officials for approval to have county election officials randomly select additional precincts to be hand counted. The secretary of state's office agreed, and the county hand counted three additional precincts. The process, which had no discrepancies and showed the vote was accurate, was livestreamed on the county's elections website.
After the March primary election, Hancock went a step further. She invited representatives from each party to conduct the post-election audit themselves. Among the Republicans who participated were some of the most vocal election skeptics.
It took the groups of Republican and Democrats an entire day to count more than 1,400 ballots. No discrepancies were found, and the count showed the machines' results were accurate.
Brazos County Republican Party officials did not respond to a request for comment and did not answer questions about their participation in the count.
Dispute over how ballot paper is numbered
The other concession by Brazos officials, to spend resources on preprinted sequentially numbered ballots, is the latest episode in a yearslong dispute between Texas election officials and voter fraud activists.
By law, ballots used in Texas must be sequentially numbered starting with 1, and distributed to polling places in batches so that “a specific range can be linked to a specific polling place.”
The law also says that ballots at a polling place “must be distributed to voters non-sequentially in order to preserve ballot secrecy.”
How counties across the state comply with these rules depends on the type of voting equipment they use. For instance, some counties, including Brazos, purchase blank ballot paper that voters insert into a touch-screen voting machine called a ballot marking device at the polling place. Once the voter is done making their candidate selections, the device prints the voter's ballot with a randomized number to preserve ballot secrecy.
The Texas secretary of state and the Texas attorney general have both clarified that this randomized numbering complies with the law. But voting fraud activists dispute this and continue to falsely claim that the randomly numbered ballots produced by the ballot marking devices cannot be audited.
Election administrators in Texas have the authority to decide the ballot-numbering method. In Hood County, tensions with voter fraud activists in 2021 over ballot numbering drove the elections administrator to resign. The county eventually purchased sequentially numbered ballot paper under a new elections administrator. The administrator did not respond to Votebeat's questions about whether the new ballots helped restore trust in the process.
Activists have also made these calls for sequentially numbered ballots in Tarrant County. County Judge Tim O'Hare, whose administration created an election integrity task force despite the lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud, said sequentially numbered ballots would “make the election more secure, create more trust in the outcome, and serve as a deterrent against fraud.” The county recently approved spending more than $30,000 on the sequentially numbered ballots for the November election.
The type of paper required is more costly because it isn't easily found off the shelf. It is custom printed by voting machine vendors. Additionally, counties have to order more paper than they typically would, to prevent a shortage or account for paper jams at polling locations. Election workers in Brazos will go through additional training to ensure they randomize and shuffle the ballots at the polling place to protect ballot secrecy as directed by state law.
In nations with high levels of fraud, sequentially numbered ballots can be helpful because officials can match the number to a voter and check whether that person voted already or not.
In the United States, election departments have voter registration databases, voter histories, and other practices in place that help ensure that each voter is only casting one ballot, said Mitchell Brown, a political science professor at Auburn University and an expert on election administration.
“What we track is who votes, not how they vote,” Brown said. “In some places, it's a good government measure, and other places it is not. So the context of how [numbered ballots] are used, and why they're being used really matters.”
In Brazos, Peters, the county judge, is certain this latest move to try to appease the election skeptics in the county “won't prove anything.”
“It's a compromise,” Peters told Votebeat. “I know they say they're concerned about the elections… . My concern was that if we totally changed the way we do elections [by adopting hand counting] that it was going to fail and that we were going to have people who wouldn't know what they're doing.”
Hancock, who has been the county's elections director since 2015 and has worked elections in Texas for more than two decades, said it's quite possible that her efforts may never satisfy the activists. She only hopes she can prevent the spread of misinformation in Brazos. She wants voters to see that her office is “doing everything that we can to ensure that a person's ballot is cast in a secure manner and counted the way that they intend for it to be counted.”
“So if I can add a few more hours to my day or whatever to help those people have confidence in what we do for voters,” she said, “then I'm happy to do that.”
Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.
Disclosure: Texas A&M University and Texas Secretary of State have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
Ted Cruz files bill to protect IVF
by By Eleanor Klibanoff, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-20 09:45:47
SUMMARY: U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Katie Britt have introduced the IVF Protection Act to safeguard access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) amid changing anti-abortion laws. The bill aims to make states ineligible for Medicaid funding if they ban IVF. This legislative effort follows an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that classified embryos as protected human life, prompting some IVF providers to pause services. The Texas Supreme Court may also consider a case impacting IVF. Cruz, seeking reelection against Democrat Colin Allred, emphasizes IVF's importance for families. Texas Governor Greg Abbott supports clarifying state laws to protect IVF, while Senate Democrats and House Speaker Mike Johnson diverge on federal versus state jurisdiction.
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U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is leading a charge to protect access to in vitro fertilization as conservative states scramble to figure out where IVF fits in the new anti-abortion legal landscape.
On Monday, Cruz and Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, both conservative, anti-abortion Republicans, filed the IVF Protection Act, which would make states ineligible to receive Medicaid funding if they ban IVF.
This bill comes in response to a ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court earlier this year that said embryos are protected human life when it comes to the state's wrongful death statute. After that ruling, many IVF providers paused those services until the Alabama Legislature passed temporary protections.
The Texas Supreme Court is considering taking up a case that could “upend IVF in Texas,” experts say. A woman has asked the court to overturn previous court rulings that awarded her ex-husband their three frozen embryos in their divorce, arguing that Texas' new abortion laws require embryos to have the same rights as living children.
Almost as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in summer 2022 and allowed states to ban abortion, questions emerged about the legal status of IVF.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed announcing this legislation, Cruz and Britt said Republicans want to “protect both life and IVF.”
“IVF has given miraculous hope to millions of Americans, and it has given families across the country the gift of children,” Cruz said in a statement. “I'm proud to partner with Sen. Katie Britt to ensure that couples in Texas and across the country have the opportunity to be loving parents, by ensuring that IVF is fully protected at the federal level.”
IVF is “profoundly pro-family,” the pair wrote in the op-ed. “Our bill will honor and support families seeking to welcome a new baby into their lives through IVF.”
Cruz is up for reelection this year, facing Democratic Congressman Colin Allred, who has made Cruz's support for Texas' abortion laws a key part of his campaign. In a statement after the Alabama court ruling, Allred said Cruz had done nothing to protect IVF, and his “dangerous record” on abortion and fetal personhood issues puts Texas families “rights and freedoms at risk.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has expressed his support for IVF, saying he believes the Legislature will clarify state law to protect the procedure.
Meanwhile, in D.C., Senate Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to pass two bills to protect IVF access, and House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he believes this is an issue best left to the states.
Pointing out that 86% of Americans believe IVF should be legal, Cruz and Britt say this should be a bipartisan bill that protects “life, family and personal liberty.”
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Texas Tribune
Trump says Paxton would make good U.S. attorney general
by By Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-20 08:47:03
SUMMARY: Former President Donald Trump is considering Ken Paxton, Texas' Attorney General, for the role of U.S. Attorney General if re-elected. Trump commended Paxton's abilities and loyalty, highlighting his legal challenge to the 2020 election results and his support during Trump's impeachment defense. Paxton was impeached for bribery allegations but acquitted, with Trump claiming credit for the outcome. Recent polls show Trump leading President Biden in key states. Paxton's legal issues have diminished following the dropping of securities fraud charges, although federal investigations continue. If nominated, Paxton's Senate confirmation faces partisan challenges and opposition from notable Republicans.
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Former President Donald Trump said he would consider tapping Ken Paxton for U.S. attorney general if he wins a second term in the White House, calling his longtime ally “a very talented guy” and praising his tenure as Texas' chief legal officer.
“I would, actually,” Trump said Saturday when asked by a KDFW-TV reporter if he would consider Paxton for the national post. “He's very, very talented. I mean, we have a lot of people that want that one and will be very good at it. But he's a very talented guy.”
Paxton has long been a close ally of Trump, famously waging an unsuccessful legal challenge to Trump's 2020 election loss in four battleground states. He also spoke at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the deadly U.S. Capitol riot in January 2021.
Paxton's loyalty was rewarded with an endorsement from Trump in the 2022 primary, which helped the attorney general fend off three prominent GOP challengers.
Trump also came to Paxton's defense when he was impeached last year for allegedly accepting bribes and abusing the power of his office to help a wealthy friend and campaign donor. After Paxton was acquitted in the Texas Senate, Trump claimed credit, citing his “intervention” on his Truth Social platform, where he denounced the proceedings and threatened political retribution for Republicans who backed the impeachment.
“I fought for him when he had the difficulty and we won,” he told KDFW. “He had some people really after him, and I thought it was really unfair.”
Trump's latest comments, delivered at the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Dallas, come after a series of recent polls have shown the presumptive Republican nominee leading President Joe Biden in a handful of key battleground states.
Paxton has also seen his political prospects rise in recent months, after prosecutors agreed in March to drop three felony counts of securities fraud that had loomed over Paxton for nearly his entire tenure as attorney general. The resolution of the nine-year-old case, along with Paxton's impeachment acquittal in the Senate last fall, has brought him closer than ever to a political career devoid of legal drama.
Still, Paxton's critics say he is far from vindicated. He remains under federal investigation for the same allegations that formed the basis of his impeachment, and he continues to face a whistleblower lawsuit from former deputies who said they were illegally fired for reporting Paxton to law enforcement. A separate lawsuit from the state bar seeks to penalize Paxton for his 2020 election challenge, which relied on discredited claims of election fraud.
If nominated, Paxton would need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The chamber is narrowly divided along party lines, with Democrats holding a 51-49 majority. One of the most prominent Republican members, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, has been an outspoken critic of Paxton, while Paxton has openly entertained the idea of challenging Cornyn in 2026.
Paxton is not the only Texan Trump has floated for a high-profile spot in his potential administration. In February, he said Gov. Greg Abbott is “absolutely” on his short list of potential vice presidential candidates. Abbott has since downplayed his interest in the job.
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Texas Tribune
These Texans aren’t taking buyouts despite repeated floods
by By Emily Foxhall, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-20 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Recent floods in Harris County, Texas, have devastated homes along the San Jacinto River. Tom Madigan, who owns multiple properties, quickly started repairs without knowing the Harris County Flood Control District aims to buy out such flood-prone properties. The region has a longstanding buyout program to remove homes from high-risk flood areas, with about 800 out of 2,400 targeted properties purchased. However, buyouts are voluntary and often insufficient for low-income residents. Despite the program, many choose to stay due to affordability and community ties, while others like Madigan remain skeptical of receiving a fair offer.
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HARRIS COUNTY — After the floodwaters earlier this month just about swallowed two of the six homes that 60-year-old Tom Madigan owns on the San Jacinto River, he didn't think twice about whether to fix them. He hired people to help, and they got to work stripping the walls, pulling up flooring and throwing out water-logged furniture.
What Madigan didn't know: The Harris County Flood Control District wants to buy his properties as part of an effort to get people out of dangerously flood-prone areas.
Back-to-back storms drenched southeast Texas in late April and early May, causing flash flooding and pushing rivers out of their banks and into low-lying neighborhoods. Officials across the region urged people in vulnerable areas to evacuate.
Like Madigan's, some places that were inundated along the San Jacinto in Harris County have flooded repeatedly. And for nearly 30 years, the flood control district has been trying to clear out homes around the river by paying property owners to move, then returning the lots to nature.
The recent floods show why buyout programs can be important. These spots typically flood first and worse. Gov. Greg Abbott reported that hundreds of rescues took place in the state while the floods destroyed homes. A man drowned and a child was swept away into the floods. One Harris County resident described climbing on top of his motor home as the water rose before first responders rescued him.
But the disaster and its aftermath also illustrate why buyouts are complicated to carry out even in Harris County, home to Houston, which has one of the most robust buyout programs in the country. The flood control district has identified roughly 2,400 properties as current buyout candidates around the San Jacinto; the district and county have bought about 800 of them.
Nearly all of the district's buyouts are voluntary. If an owner doesn't want to sell, the district can't force them out.
Buyouts make sense for some people who can't be protected from floods, said Alessandra Jerolleman, director of research for the Center on Environment, Land and Law at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.
But buyouts might not provide lower-income people enough money to get somewhere safer, she said, and they could lose important support like child care from nearby family or neighbors.
“It's not as though it's a guarantee of reducing risks to that family,” Jerolleman said.
People who live near the river and who have endured repeated floods explained that they've stayed because it's affordable and, most of the time, peaceful. Where else would they be able to buy anything like it? Some said they didn't think the government would offer them what they consider a fair price to sell their land. Some didn't know the buyout program existed.
Madigan started buying homes more than 15 years ago in the unincorporated River Terrace neighborhood because they were cheap. On Tuesday, the Houston firefighter drank a Heineken and grilled hamburgers for his work crew outside his most damaged house, which he rents to his brother. Sodden rugs baked in the sun on the driveway.
Madigan said he might have taken a buyout if it was a reasonable offer — but he doubted it would be. He said he needed to get the properties ready again for his renters. “I can't wait,” he said.
Two blocks away, water had swept through a yellow house Madigan rents to a family with a teenage son. One of the workers fixing the property, 21-year-old Omar Reyna, watched the family throw out pretty much everything they had. Piecing together new laminate flooring with his dad, Reyna kept thinking about a trash bag of Teddy bears and stuffed toys he tossed out for them.
He wondered if the parents had been saving the toys for another kid they might have in the future.
“The faster we get it done, the faster they can come back in here,” Reyna said.
Some people choose to live with the risk of flooding
The San Jacinto is the largest river in the state's most populous county. For years before Harris County's first floodplain maps were drawn up in the mid-1980s, people built homes near its banks. Even today, people can still build in the vast floodplain if the houses are high enough and have enough stormwater detention.
The flood control district tries to buy out homes in pockets of the floodplain that are deepest, said James Wade, manager for the district's property acquisition department. Those are places where engineers can't easily fix flooding problems.
Buyouts are meant to get people out of flood zones before their property floods again, not to help in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. The process is slow: In some cases, it can take 18 months or longer to approve a buyout application, Wade said. The district pays owners the market value or pre-flood value for their house, determined by a third-party appraiser, plus moving expenses and a supplement to help them get into a house out of the floodplain, Wade said.
“It's a very equitable, fair program,” Wade said — but still some people don't want to leave.
Those who stay learn to adapt. They build homes on stilts. They monitor the river level and watch for releases of water from the Lake Conroe dam upstream. Some know intimately the routine of rebuilding: gut the house, clean it, put it back together.
The floor of 49-year-old Sean Vincent's house in the Forest Cove neighborhood in northeast Houston is 15 feet above the ground. Three feet of water flooded it when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017. This month, the floods reached five feet high on Vincent's property. He cleaned out his waterlogged ground-level shed with help from church members. On Tuesday, he was building new shelves for it.
But most of the time Vincent, who works in railroad traffic control, said he enjoys the space surrounded by tall trees with room for his three kids.
“It's just really not a major part of our life,” Vincent said of the flooding. “Yes, it's inconvenient. Yes, it's now happened to us twice in seven years … It's sort of a trade-off for us. And it is lovely out here.”
“Where are you going to go?”
Then there are those who stay because they don't see anywhere else to go.
Jack St. John, 67, a retired long-haul truck driver, moved to Northshore 43 years ago and has had to clean up after two floods. He worries any time flooding threatens, but the neighborhood's advantages keep him there: He has no water bill because he has a well. His taxes are reasonable. The neighborhood has a fish fry in the spring and a barbecue in the fall.
“You know, when you leave, where are you going to go?” he said. “What's it going to cost to buy into another place?”
Farther northeast, in the Idle Wild and Idle Glen neighborhoods, the floods forced some residents to sleep under tarps. On one largely forested street, boats were turned sideways or flipped upside down. A small building was lodged in the trees. A car was in the ditch.
For several years, Elvia Bethea, 68, has driven from her home in Humble to check on people and pets here, and pick up stray animals. On Tuesday, she and other volunteers gave John Gray, 50, bamboo yard torches to fight the many mosquitoes, plus two trays of chocolate-covered strawberries.
Gray said he couldn't afford to fix up his destroyed house. He earns a living printing labor law posters for businesses. His printers at home were destroyed.
Gray said he had never heard of the buyout program but would consider taking one.
“Who do I call?” Gray asked. “I don't have a clue.”
From the back of a white SUV, Bethea handed some hot dogs to Jose Tabores, 68, who lives on Gray's land in a trailer now filled with mud.
“I'm coming for dinner, remember!” Bethea teased him.
Nearby, 51-year-old Veronika Scheid had been sleeping in a wet tent. The flood washed the shipping crate she lived in down the road and into the trees — along with her and her neighbors' belongings.
At a low point, when Scheid was crying over all she lost, she found a pink-and-white beaded necklace with stitching in the shape of a “V,” like her name. At the end was a charm shaped like a house.
She was grateful the person who owned the land where she stayed hadn't taken a buyout. Otherwise she would have nowhere to go.
“At least we have this,” Scheid said.
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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