Tarrant County elections staff briefed the Election Board on a package of 2025 legislative changes that the presenter said will alter how the county conducts and reports elections, particularly for the Nov. 4, 2025, joint special and constitutional amendment election.
The presentation summarized many enacted bills (as read aloud in the meeting) and explained operational impacts: a requirement that voting-system equipment used during an election be stored in a locked room rather than a common open area; a procurement minimum that requires purchasing 125% of ballots relative to prior turnout; expanded confidentiality protections for current and former election officials; new requirements for logic-and-accuracy and tabulation testing and a statutory definition of a "representative sample" for testing; stricter procedures for absentee-by-mail carrier-envelope defects (including a two-day correction notice and retention of the original carrier envelope by elections staff); and changes to curbside voting that add documentation, a requirement for two assisting poll workers in some assisted cases, and a 20-foot electioneering-free zone around a vehicle when a voter is receiving curbside assistance.
Staff also summarized a bill that allows political subdivisions and school districts to move their elections to the November uniform date if they follow local procedures; another change cited would cross-check Department of Public Safety records to identify voters who obtain out-of-state identification. The presenter explained a separate bill that permits combining precincts for countywide polling-location calculations, which the presenter said reduces the county's minimum number of locations from 347 in the previous cycle to 212 for the upcoming November election.
Several changes affect audits and reporting: staff said the law now mandates printing and retaining scanner reports generated when machines are closed; it codifies many logic-and-accuracy steps already performed by staff and defines the representative sample for testing as "10 of each voting device or 5% of each type of voting device, whichever is smaller"; another bill requires that manual post-election hand counts be conducted by the ballot board and that in-person audits for early voting and election day be performed by pulling location, not by precinct. A separate bill cited by staff will eliminate the gap between early voting and election day, creating 13 consecutive days of voting (12 days of early voting immediately followed by election day) and requires that early-voting locations remain open on election day and that their equipment be used on election day.
Staff warned that those requirements could slow some processes (for example, printing mandated scanner reports at site closeout could back up closing procedures) and change how results are released: election-night reporting will be simplified to two categories, absentee and in-person, rather than breaking in-person voting into early and election day. The presenter said implementation of some of these changes is dependent on guidance and a report from the Texas Secretary of State, and that the Secretary's office did not expect to implement some requirements until after the primary cycle.
Board members asked clarifying questions about whether combined precincts and the 13-day requirement will make early results less meaningful; staff replied the first in-person results are likely to appear later on election night and that early batches will come from less-busy locations, with potentially large swings as results from high-turnout sites are tallied. Staff said a state committee of election officials and county judges is working on implementation guidance.
No formal action was taken during the briefing; staff encouraged board members to expect additional procedural guidance from the Secretary of State prior to implementation.