Texas officials defend integrity of state voting system
SAN ANTONIO — As drama played out over presidential election results in other states, Texas officials are standing by the integrity of the voting process in the Lone Star State.
But they said the state needs to maintain vigilance against computer malware and other forms of interference, and didn’t rule out the possibility of a future controversy.
“We always need to be aware of bad actors and how technology is so fast-paced,” said Bexar County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez, who led efforts to put safe voting strategies in place in the San Antonio area during the pandemic.
“We need to stay on top of that, and particularly make sure there’s a firewall there to protect those votes from potential cybersecurity attacks.”
The eyes of the nation recently were on Michigan, whose fourmember board of state canvassers — two Republicans and two Democrats — finally certified election results in favor of President-elect Joe
Biden, with three votes, the minimum needed for approval. One Republican member abstained.
In Texas, results have been canvassed by city councils, school boards and other local governing bodies and forwarded to the secretary of state’s office, which has until Dec. 7 to present results to Gov. Greg Abbott for a statewide canvassing.
If tradition holds true, 38 electors provided by the state’s Republican Party will cast Electoral College votes for President Donald Trump by Christmas Day.
To be certain, the result in Texas is noncontroversial. Trump carried about 52 percent of the vote statewide. Abbott is a Republican and Trump supporter.
But the questions the president has raised about traditions tied to the electoral process may fuel a move toward reforms that could remove partisanship from the certification process.
“I don’t know if the way they have it set up in Michigan is better, but you would almost think some decentralization of that power out of the governor’s office might be a better model than what we have now in Texas,” said Rodriguez, a Democrat who supports a “nonpartisan framework” for certification, redistricting and other aspects of government in order to “bolster citizens’ confidence in the process.”
“The more we can depoliticize the process, the better,” he said.
Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen, a nonpartisan department head, said the process in Texas for handling results in a general election doesn’t involve political party leaders, unlike those in the primary, which are certified by local and statewide party organizations.
“Yes, politics is underneath everything. But the canvass that the governor does here is not reliant on Republicans and Democrats. Locally, it’s not reliant on Republicans and Democrats,” she said. “We don’t have the strong Republican and Democratic parties butting heads.”
Political tensions that have put a spotlight on “battleground states” such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia could come around to Texas if
there ever were questions raised in a close election, including allegations of voter fraud, Callanen said.
“We feel for our compadres in these other states. But I think every one of them to some degree or other has the exact same checks and balances that we have,” she said.
In Texas, those integrity checks includes rigorous troubleshooting of tabulator machines twice before and once after ballots are scanned, using a “test deck” of some 1,700 cards, tomake sure the counts match exactly.
After the election, the secretary of state’s office requires all 254 counties in Texas to perform a “manual recount audit” of precincts or poll sites randomly chosen by the state agency.
Callanen said her staff ran an audit on four Bexar County vote centers and found no irregularities.
Last year, the county replaced a 17-year-old voting system with new machines that generate a paper record, which voters personally review before submitting it for counting.
“That’s what the voters have wanted. We listened for 10 years how everybody wanted a paper trail. This in reality is a paper trail. It’s not a receipt, but it’s apaper trail,” Callanen said.
Yet, no election system is immune from controversy.
In 2016, two of the state’s 38 electors, in defiance of a party pledge, cast Electoral College votes for someone other than Trump — one for then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich, another for former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who wasn’t even a presidential hopeful that year.
Texas also has been criti
cized and named as a defendant in a lawsuit for applying a “winner-take-all” method to the Electoral College process.
In one pending lawsuit, the League of United Latin American Citizens has argued electoral votes should be divided proportionately. But the federal court system so far has held that the winner-take-all process used in Texas and 47 other states is constitutional.
There are sharp differences of opinion on howbig a threat voter fraud is to democracy. The South San Antonio Independent School District, where it was a major problem 20-30 years ago, no longer conducts its own school board elections. They’re now run by Callanen’s department.
Some election improprieties of the past, such as missing ballot boxes in rural counties that became the stuff of Texas lore, are far less prevalent today. But Callanen and Rodriguez haven’t completely dismissed concerns about the possibility of voter fraud in future elections.
“The fraud or security piece probably now is more related to technology than to any kind of purged voters that are voting, or deceased voters that are still voting,” Rodriguez said. “You don’t hear those kind of assertions asmuch these days.”
They both are hopeful that the intense nationwide scrutiny on the election process will lead to reforms winning approval in next year’s legislative session, such as creation of an online registration process to help expand the Bexar County electorate, with more convenience and less paperwork.
Callanen favors efforts to
rein in mail-ballot applications sent to voters by candidates, resulting in duplicate forms and administrative headaches.
She also supports providing a means for disabled voters to attain secured access to a ballot by computer that they can print and mail in.
Rodriguez favors reforms that give voters “the most options and the most access.”
He said heal so would wel
comea “healthy discussion” that considers major changes to the Electoral College system that may be needed nationwide.
“Iwould prefer we go to a popular vote, and truly have ‘one person, one vote matters,’ not just in Texas, but all over the country,” Rodriguez said.
Former San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger, a Democrat and former chief justice of the Fourth Court of Appeals, said Tuesday that Trump’s public refusal to accept the election results is “all very, very bad.”
“Any president, regardless of party, who is making it as difficult as possible to function as a democracy is not doing the country any good whatsoever, and is … an enemy of our democracy,” Hardberger said.