SE Texas Times

With communities across the country preparing for a record number of voters to cast their ballots by mail, the heated debate continues over the potential pitfalls of an election in which mail-in votes will play a bigger part in deciding the outcome than ever before.

Judy Nichols, the Jefferson County GOP chair and Texas Republican County Chairman’s Association vice president, said that Texas does not have the measures in place to ensure an entire election carried out by mail-in voting would be secure.

“There is not a functioning infrastructure set up and in place and there is not adequate time to effectively build it,” Nichols told the Southeast Texas Times.

As an elections official in Jefferson County, Nichols said she understands what goes into counting mail-in ballots and ensuring none of them are tampered with.

“We do not have the physical space to count and secure the ballots nor the man power on staff,” Nichols told the Southeast Texas Times. “There is nothing in our county budget to cover the expense, and it would be a logistical nightmare to try and remedy those challenges in the short amount of time before voting begins on Oct. 13.”

Wright said ensuring a fair, secure election is not simply a matter of getting ballots out to everyone and getting them mailed back. Accounting for absentee voting, such as that by members of the military, takes an entirely separate, time-intensive process that cannot be easily scaled-up to accommodate an election where every vote has to be hand-counted. There is already often a degree of lack of confidence in votes that aren’t recorded at a polling station, with voters often uneasy over whether their absentee ballot will be counted.

“Currently, absentee ballot voters have less confidence in their vote counting than in-person voters and this will not improve that,” Nichols told the Southeast Texas Times.