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Senator proposes pilot of ‘smart’ ballot drop boxes that scan barcodes and capture images

General Government Appropriations Subcommittee · February 4, 2026
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

Sen. Cal Musselman asked the subcommittee to fund a small pilot—five camera-enabled drop boxes that scan ballot barcodes, timestamp and capture a front-facing photo—to give county clerks a new tool for tracing destroyed or mass-dropped ballots; he proposed a modest $75,000 pilot and left data-retention and procurement questions for clerks and staff.

Sen. Cal Musselman told the General Government Appropriations Subcommittee he wants to pilot ‘scan’ drop boxes that read ballot barcodes, capture a front-facing image when a ballot is deposited, and report the drop to county clerks in real time.

“It's a form of voter ID,” Musselman said, describing a system that would associate a ballot’s barcode with a time, place and an image of the person who deposited it. He…

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