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Elections administrator warns SB 2753 could add roughly $40,000 in equipment costs and asks for salary and website funding
Summary
Elections Administrator Michelle Wharton told the court her two‑person office serves about 18,088 registered voters and requested a salary increase to $55,000 and a deputy salary of $45,000. She warned that Senate Bill 2753 would eliminate the three‑day gap between early voting and election day and could require buying 20 additional poll pads (estimated $40,000), and described rising website and ADA‑compliance costs.
Michelle Wharton, Titus County’s elections administrator, presented the elections office budget and staffing needs at the commissioners’ budget workshop and outlined how pending state law changes would affect local costs and operations.
Wharton said the office serves roughly 18,088 registered voters across 19 precincts with a staff of two. She asked the court to consider raising the elections administrator salary to $55,000 with a $5,000 annual stipend for county website administration, and to increase the deputy election clerk salary to $45,000 “to better reflect the responsibilities required to operate a two‑person election office.”
Wharton warned that Texas Senate Bill 2753 would remove the three‑day gap between the end of early voting and the start of election day, which in her view would force counties like Titus to buy more poll pads. “When 2753 goes into effect... we would not have time to print those reports and get them to the judges before voting starts the next morning at 6:00 a.m. which would cause us to have to buy 20 more poll pads,” she said, estimating those 20 pads could cost about $40,000 and noting the devices become obsolete over time.
She also said SB 2753 could complicate May elections and runoffs because of compressed post‑election audit and recount timelines and that the workload could exceed a two‑person office’s capacity for tightly scheduled elections.
On county website needs, Wharton described rising TAC vendor costs for ADA compliance: she said the county’s TAC website fee would increase from around $4,200 to about $13,200 a year and that ADA compliance work will require additional tooling and a toolbar feature for font and contrast controls. She requested a $5,000 stipend to offset website administrator duties she has assumed in addition to elections responsibilities.
Wharton said she will bring more documentation and is working with local school districts and other stakeholders to explore joint elections or alternate arrangements to mitigate equipment costs if SB 2753 takes effect.
No formal decisions or purchases were approved in the workshop.
