Secretary of State seeks election-audit funding, salary supplements in amended budget
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Summary
Charlene McGowan told the committee the secretary's amended FY26 package includes a one-time $2,000 employee supplement and requests of $1.8M for double-blind OCR counting and $5M for full hand counts of select statewide races to bolster audits and public confidence; she cited compliance with Senate Bill 189.
Charlene McGowan, general counsel for the secretary of state, told the Appropriations General Government Subcommittee that the office's amended FY26 budget focuses on maintaining secure elections, protecting consumers and modernizing licensing systems.
McGowan said the office supports a one-time $2,000 salary supplement for employees and described three election-related requests. The first is the salary supplement included across the office. The second is $1,800,000 for a double-blind count using optical-character-recognition technology that will read human-readable text on summary paper ballots; McGowan said the item is to comply with the requirements of Senate Bill 189. The third is a $5,000,000 request to conduct full hand counts of select statewide races in the 2026 cycle; McGowan said the office seeks to make that funding recurring to continue election audits that the office calls nation-leading.
McGowan also highlighted modernization in the professional licensing division, including an online application tracker that reduced nursing application processing time by about 62%, from roughly 48 days to about 9 days.
When members asked technical questions about the OCR project, McGowan said the technology was piloted with one-time funding in prior elections and that the vendor-run program has shown high accuracy in verifying race counts. Committee members thanked the secretary's office for its work; no formal appropriations were made during the session.