Hays County Commissioners Select New Voting Equipment

Hays County Commissioners Court selected the county’s new voting system Tuesday morning. 

Commissioners voted 4-1 with Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra voting against purchasing Hart InterCivic’s Verity Duo, a hybrid voting system. The new machines are expected to be in place for the November 2019 election.

Elections Administrator, Jennifer Anderson, and both vendors were present to answer any of the commissioners’ questions during the discussion.

With the hybrid systems, voters will use an electronic machine to fill out their ballots and will receive a receipt of their votes for them to review.

The receipts are then scanned into another machine for the ballot to be recorded and tallied. Bilingual speakers will have the option of making their selections and printing their ballot receipts in either English or Spanish.

“I don’t think we can go wrong with either of these vendors,” Commissioner Mark Jones said. “I think they’ll both do us a good job.”

Hays County officials have been discussing the need for new voting equipment for several years, culminating in a workshop earlier this year by vendors Hart Intercivic and Elections Systems & Software, the only two companies that supply paper back-up ballots and are approved by the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

 “For many years some residents of Hays County have expressed skepticism about the elections process,” Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra said. “We hope that this purchase helps to restore confidence in the elections process and is the genesis to enriched unity of citizens in Hays County. We are working to ensure that all votes are counted.”

The County currently has only 256 voting machines, which are aging out of usefulness when compared to current technology. The machines were purchased in 2004, and typically have a 10-year lifespan.

Hays County Legal Counsel Mark Kennedy said the prices in the proposals were negotiable, but the prices “are probably close to what they would be”; normally, when he negotiates contracts, he said he looks at the other contractual terms over price.

Anderson said the commissioners court had budgeted $2 million for the purchase of new voting equipment.

Commissioner Lon Shell noted there were definitely pros and cons for each of the vendors, and there are subtle differences between them; but he believed, in the end, both systems worked very similarly and would produce a “very good election.”

The Court members considered the need for paper back-up ballots in both English and Spanish, accessibility by disabled voters and those voting curb-side, and security of the systems before making their decision.

Felice Liston, director of sales for Hart InterCivic, clarified voters would not have to go to a specific machine for ADA-accessible; during the workshop demonstrations, one system was set up as ADA-accessible and the other in a standard but all the Hart “devices whether standard or ADA could be used by the ADA community.”

During the discussion, commissioners noted that ES&S’s system would cost the county $228,000 more in total than its competitor. Hart’s system would cost the county would come in under the budgeted $2 million.

Pete Lichtenheld, vice president of customer success for Hart InterCivic, said there were approximately 10,000 Hart InterCivic’s Verity Duo system devices in use since the system was released in 2015; however, it had only recently received certification and had not yet been sold in the state of Texas.

Among the differences between the two vendors was the way the scanner reads and records a voter’s choices.

With the ES&S ExpressVote system, a voter’s selections are encoded into a barcode, which is then scanned by the machine.

“One of the big things we did during the certification process that did not come up today but that is in line with some of the questions you’ve asked,” Lichtenheld said, “Is the use of barcodes. Our competitor puts the voter choice in the barcode, and voters do not read a barcode. We don’t put the voter choice in the barcode; the words on the page—that’s what gets read…we use optical character recognition.”

ES&S representatives said they considered using optimal character recognition, but the barcode was faster and more accurate.

With the new system selected, Anderson and Kennedy will begin negotiations on and finalize a contract with Hart InterCivic; the Texas Election Code requires all contracts between local governments regarding election equipment must be approved by the secretary of state.  

Anderson says that the next step, following approval of a contract by the Secretary of State’s Office, will be to publicize the new machines so that voters are familiar with them by November. Hays County’s Elections Office administers elections not only for countywide elections, but also for many city, school, and special districts throughout the county.