Still no paper trail for county ballots

Harris County may shatter turnout records with as many as 1.5 million voters in this year’s presidential election, the county clerk estimates.

It also has achieved a less desirable position, however — the county will be the largest jurisdiction in the United States that cannot audit its election results because it uses a voting system that does not produce a paper record.

Of all the paperless votes in the country, about 1 in 5 will be cast here, according to an analysis by the New York University Law School-based Brennan Center for Justice.

“If there’s some reason to cast doubt on the election outcome, there’s nothing independent of the software to turn back

to with a paperless system,” said Lawrence Norden, director of the center’s election reform program. “All you can likely do is rerun the results and have the software come up with the same results as the previous time. I don’t think that’s great for voter confidence.”

Election integrity has taken on added importance this cycle as President Donald Trump continues to say the only way he can lose is if the contest is rigged. And two-thirds of Republicans do not have confidence the election will be conducted fairly, an August NBC News poll found.

Polling consistently has shown that Democratic nominee Joe Biden has a legitimate chance to carry Texas, bringing extra scrutiny to a state that has not seen a close presidential contest in a generation.

Even with a surge in mail ballots, which will be saved in case a recount is needed, Harris County likely will have more than 1 million in-person votes in this election with no paper trail.

Despite warnings from election security experts and an acknowledgment by past Republican and Democratic county clerks that new machines were needed, Harris County failed to follow the state’s other urban counties in doing so before 2020. Texas is one of 14 states that still permits paperless voting systems.

A switch after 2000 debacle

The county since 2002 has used the Hart InterCivic eSlate machine, remembered by many voters for its spinning wheel interface. It records votes on a mobile memory card that is then brought to a central counting site, uploaded onto a computer and tallied.

While Harris County has seen its share of election mishaps the past two decades — including perennially slow results, misallocated machines and even a miscalled race — the eSlates never have malfunctioned on a large scale.

Some voters long have complained that the machine does not print a copy of their selections. In 2018, a few said that a sticky wheel function caused them to mistakenly select the wrong candidate.

The switch to digital machines came amid a nationwide push toward electronic systems after the Florida recount debacle in the 2000 presidential election exposed vulnerabilities inmechanical punch- card systems.

Some election experts warned states and counties were merely trading one set of potential problems for another if systems no longer kept any paper record of votes. Rebecca Mercuri, then a computer science professor at Bryn Mawr College, traveled to Houston to testify against choosing the eSlate because its results cannot be audited.

Reached by phone in New Jersey late last month, she laughed when told the county stillwas using the system. Replacing machines in the nation’s third-largest county is a difficult and expensive task, Mercuri said, but the process should have begun years ago. She said the continued use of eSlates was a “10 out of 10” concern.

“There’s no checks and balances, aswe like to say in government,” Mercuri said. “There’s no way to verify what a voter cast or what they believe they cast on the screen is actually being recorded correctly.”

A warehouse fire in 2010 destroyed nearly all of Harris County’s fleet of machines. Despite some calls to at least use the mishap to switch to a paper-backed system, the county bought new eSlates.

The 2016 presidential election marked a national shift back toward paper-backed voting machines, as Russian attempts to infiltrate American election systems became understood. Since then, Bexar, Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, Fort Bend and Travis counties purchased paper-based systems.

Fort Bend County Elections Administrator John Oldham said he decided to make the switch after the Legislature in 2019 nearly passed a ban on paperless machines. Plus, his 13-year- old machines had begun to fail.

“They were having issues with the capacitors on the motherboard burning up,” Oldham said. “The last couple years, we were getting 15 to 20 of these things happening every election.”

Harris County failed to move as quickly, however. Both 2018 candidates for county clerk, Republican Stan Stanart and Democrat Diane Trautman, pledged to replace the aging eSlates.

“We must replace the current electronic machines with a machine that produces a verifiable paper trail,” Trautman said a few days after she won the election.

She initially had hoped to acquire the new machines in time for the 2020 presidential election — Houston even hosted a voting machine trade show last year — but within months of taking office concluded the timeline was not feasible.

The county last December began soliciting vendor proposals, aiming to debut newmachines in the May 2021 elections.

Launching a new voting system in a low-turnout election is wise because it allows county clerks to resolve inevitable problems with a wider margin for error, said Dan Wallach, a professor of computer science at Rice University.

“Otherwise, you’re just inviting new system jitters making a mess when you really, really want smooth sailing,” Wallach said in an email.

He pointed to Georgia’s disastrous rollout of a new system in that state’s July runoff, which caused blocklong lines as poll workers struggled to get machines up and running.

Trautman resigned inMay, citing health concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Her replacement, 34-year- old Christopher Hollins, is preparing to run his first election — likely the highest-turnout contest in Harris County history — with no blueprint for doing so during a public health crisis.

“There’s no way to verify what a voter cast or what they believe they cast on the screen is actually being recorded correctly.” Computer scientist Rebecca Mercuri

Just one more cycle?

Hollins conceived an ambitious $27.2 million plan that includes more early and Election Day voting sites, doubling the number of poll workers, drivethru voting and longer voting hours.

He is stuck with the aging eSlates. In one instance, this has been a blessing. Hollins needed moremachines to stock his additional polling sites; he secured 2,825 eSlates that Fort Bend and Travis counties no longer had any use for.

Harris County’s next voting machine, which Hollins said he hopes to recommend to Commissioners Court by the end of November, will produce a paper backup, he said.

He acknowledged there is no way toperformamanual auditof the eSlates, but said county residents should trust them for one more cycle. The system is never connected to the internet, and the clerk’s office has an IT team that looks out for any potential cyberattacks.

“In terms of our ballots, before we place them on the machines, there are intensive logic and accuracy tests to make sure that the way in which you vote, or intend to vote, is recorded properly,” Hollins said.

Early voting begins Oct. 13.