ELECTION INTEGRITYTexas Tells Local Election Officials to Stop Releasing Information That Exposes How Some People Vote
Texas’ top election official issued emergency guidance to counties aimed at protecting ballot privacy. The emergency guidance from the secretary of state comes after reports in Votebeat and The Texas Tribune confirmed the choices some voters make can later be identified through legally available records.
Texas’ top election official Thursday issued emergency guidance to counties aimed at protecting ballot privacy, after Votebeat and The Texas Tribune confirmed that the private choices some voters make can later be identified using public, legally available records.
“It is imperative that we make every effort possible to provide protections to voters while balancing the public’s interest in transparent elections,” Christina Adkins, the election division director for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, wrote in the memo to county election officials.
Separately, state Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday released a legal opinion stressing that any disclosure of election records must be done in a way that preserves the privacy of a voter’s choices.
Both Paxton and Nelson emphasized that Texas voters have an overarching right to a secret ballot. It is “unacceptable for any voter to have their ballot choices publicized,” Nelson said in a statement.
In testimony to state lawmakers last week, Adkins confirmed reporting from Votebeat and the Tribune that found some voters could be tied to their ballots through a combination of publicly available information, which lawmakers and county officials have made easier to access in recent years in the name of election transparency.
She also acknowledged that election officials had been worried that the state’s push for more transparency around elections would compromise ballot secrecy.
The emergency guidance is an attempt to close off the public’s ability to link some voters with their ballot choices. Last month, an independent news site published what it said was the ballot of former Republican Party of Texas Chair Matt Rinaldi, cast in the March 5 GOP primary. The site didn’t fully explain how it linked the ballot image to Rinaldi, who has neither confirmed nor denied that it was his ballot.
Votebeat and the Tribune were able to verify and replicate a series of steps to identify a specific person’s ballot choices using public records. But to protect the secrecy of the ballot, the two news outlets are not detailing the precise information needed or the process used to match ballot images with individual voters.
Lawmakers Made Election Records More Accessible
Soon after the November 2020 election, as former President Donald Trump and his allies promoted baseless theories that his reelection loss was caused by voting fraud, the number of election-related public record requests increased.
