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Residents press Tarrant County election board on seals, ballot stock, technology and camera timestamps
Summary
At the board meeting, multiple public commenters urged changes to ballot-sealing procedures, single-style ballot stock, system performance fixes, better documentation for equipment turn-in, and wall-mounted clocks to verify when livestream cameras go off.
Public commenters at the Tarrant County Election Board meeting raised multiple operational and security concerns and offered specific remedies.
Tammy Laymon, a CPA and certified fraud examiner who also serves as an election judge and poll watcher, urged the board to require larger serialized seals that can accommodate signatures on the seal itself. "Serialized seals that are signed are one of the few safeguards available when ballot bags are out of public view," she said, and offered handouts and vendor information.
Karen Wiseman, who has served on logic-and-accuracy and post-election hand-count audit teams, said she continues to see multiple ballot-paper types at single polling locations and urged the county to use a single style of ballot stock with consistent watermarking and preprinted serial numbers. She cited a provision of the Texas election code on test ballot stock and noted contract language from the voting-system vendor that disclaims liability for unauthorized paper.
Brenda Helmer, a ballot-board member, summarized an expert’s warning about the vendor’s Verity/Vanguard system, saying the expert concluded a voting system "may not be as accurate or as secure as its designers believe it to be" and that QR or barcode-based ballots can prevent voters from verifying the human-readable selections.
Other commenters described operational issues that affect trust and efficiency: Tammy Grantham asked the elections office to diagnose and fix extreme slowdowns in mail-ballot processing that she said increased processing time from about 60 seconds to as long as six minutes; Donna Collins asked that the county provide duplicate turn-in documentation so judges have records that show which supplies were returned to rally stations; and John Raymond urged installation of 24-hour wall clocks in livestreamed rooms to make it possible for the public to verify camera outages and timestamps.
Why it matters: The public comments focused on chain-of-custody measures, equipment reliability, auditability of ballots and ballot stock, and transparency of camera records—issues that affect voter confidence in both the integrity and administration of local elections.
What was not resolved: The board received the comments and some members asked follow-up questions, but the meeting record shows no immediate policy changes; several commenters provided handouts or offered to email supplemental materials.
Next steps: Election office staff were asked to follow up on questions about seals, ballot stock and system performance; vendors and statutory compliance were cited as relevant to any corrective steps.
