The Dallas County Elections Office allowed voters to test voting machines on Monday and ask questions about election integrity in Dallas.
Heider Garcia, the former Tarrant County elections administrator, was selected to serve as Dallas County’s new elections administrator in October, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Under Garcia, the Dallas County Elections Office took a step toward election transparency on Monday, allowing residents to test voting machines and inquire about the election process in Dallas County.
“We are opening the doors for the public to come in and ask questions,” he said in an interview with The Dallas Express. “We acknowledge that there is a lot of information out there that is confusing people, making them question the institution of elections. … As a friend of mine says, there’s no better disinfectant than sunlight.”
Garcia asserted that there are “two main pillars” to maintaining the election system’s integrity: prevention and detection — preventing election fraud and detecting when something is amiss.
“If something happens, how do we know it happened?” he explained. “There’s a very robust paper trail that people can use, and we use to verify. … So we want the public to learn about that so they can keep us in check and they can build trust.”
Monday marked the first time Dallas County has taken this step toward transparency with the voters.
“I started this in Tarrant County. I think it was a year ago,” said Garcia. “So, it was one of the things I definitely wanted to start doing here as well.”
“It’s just an exercise of good public service. … It’s me giving the public the chance to put me on the spot, to put the department on the spot,” he continued. “I think that’s just good governance. I think that’s what we get paid to do. It’s literally in my job description: answer questions.”
Garcia said the most common concerns he hears from voters pertain to voter identity — ensuring the identity of voters is properly verified and there are no “ghost voters.”
Dallas County uses a “hybrid” voting system, in which the voter inserts a paper ballot into an electronic voting machine, makes their selections, gets the paper ballot back, and files it into a second machine where the ballots are kept until voting is complete.
“It’s a mix of what used to be the ‘all electronic without a paper trail’ system and a paper base that used to be hand marked,” explained Garcia. “You have a chance to verify what the machine is assuming you’re intending to vote on before it gets cast. And … you have an audit trail.”
Garcia added that regardless of the technological security measures the elections office institutes, the integrity of the election system always falls back on people, such as poll workers and elections judges.
“Obviously, we put in a lot of security controls and technology to eliminate vulnerabilities,” he said. “But the technology is not the reason you trust the process. It’s the people that work in it. It’s the poll workers. Because at the end of the day, the poll worker is the one checking the ID.”
“Our staff is the one locking down the ballots at night and making sure they’re pristine and all of that,” he continued. “It’s important that we build trust in the system, not in the automated system, in the elections process as a whole, because that process is run by people.”
Garcia said he wants the people of Dallas to know the elections office “is open to be transparent [and] to answer questions.”
“We believe it’s important for people to not be afraid to ask questions. We believe that people are entitled to answers when they come in and ask for records. They’re not asking for a favor. … They’re exercising the right as taxpayers and citizens of the United States to say, ‘I want my government to answer questions for me.'”
“Most importantly, we want people to be excited about the election too and to trust it,” he said. “We want people to feel confident and safe and [to] want to go and participate because [they] know [their] vote matters.”
One resident who took advantage of Garcia’s push for transparency was Shannon Barnett — an advocate of My Vote Counts in Texas.
As previously covered by The Dallas Express, My Vote Counts in Texas is a non-partisan grassroots organization pushing for “meaningful change … to restore faith” in local elections in Texas.
Barnett said she has served as an elections clerk and judge in the past. She told DX on Monday that she has concerns about mail-in ballots and early voting.
She added that she believes precinct voting is a more secure and more efficient operation than allowing residents to vote county-wide.
Barnett said Garcia allowing voters to test the machines and ask questions is “wonderful.”
She asked Garcia various questions about the voting system and said he was “very forthright” in his answers. Barnett added that she will serve as an election judge in the upcoming May election.
“I’m worried about voter turnout. Because primaries [are], to me, the most important election because that’s how you determine who you vote for, but the public doesn’t see it that way,” she said, adding that she believes voter turnout will improve “if we can restore voter confidence in the system.”
“We [have] to get the excitement back in the elections,” she concluded.
Furthermore, Garcia told DX that the elections office “absolutely” plans to allow more testing of voting machines and more opportunities to ask questions of elections staff.