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Public commenters urge Collin County to strengthen election security, question ballot‑marking devices and contingency plans
Summary
Multiple public commenters raised concerns about ballot‑marking devices, audit scope and internet‑outage contingencies; speakers urged hand‑marked paper ballots, flagged costs for BMDs, and sought contingency training for poll workers if systems go offline.
Several members of the public used the court’s public‑comment time to press Collin County officials on election security, ballot‑marking devices (BMDs), audit procedures and contingency planning for internet outages.
Chuck Reynolds told the court the county’s voting process is vulnerable because ballots rely on barcodes that are not voter‑verifiable and because the state audit he described samples a small number of precincts and races: “We have a vulnerable system that can easily become an uncoverable shell game with a nefarious security breach,” he said, and urged changes before November. Another commenter argued recent state moves in Georgia and Virginia underscore a shift toward paper ballots and said, “We must go to hand marked paper ballots to preserve the voters intent.”
Avis Novak provided detailed procurement figures for BMDs, stating the county’s initial outlay for 1,800 BMDs was $4,220 each for a total she cited as $7,000,596; she also noted a renewal payment of about $547,457.55, of which $357,696 was for maintenance and firmware licenses, and suggested ballot‑on‑demand printers and trade‑ins as potential cost reductions. Debbie Lindstrom requested a clear contingency plan if internet outages occur during voting, citing prior AT&T outages in Collin County and an FBI advisory about distributed denial‑of‑service attacks.
Court members accepted the comments; no immediate policy change was made on the record. Commenters asked staff and elected officials to consider steps ranging from additional audits to adopting hand‑marked paper ballots and improving poll‑worker training for offline procedures.
