Tarrant County deployed new election software to allow people to view ballots and other data from past elections.
Last year, the state legislature passed a law that requires counties to make some election documents public.
The software that the county is using is called “Ballot Verifier.” It allows people to compare records side-by-side to ensure that the ballot’s electronic and physical copies match, reported KERA News.
“Experience the future of election transparency with Ballot Verifier. Ballot Verifier proactively makes granular election data readily accessible online, eliminating barriers to transparency and freeing up time otherwise spent fielding public record requests,” reads the software company Civera’s website.
“Our system integrates with the major voting system vendors: Dominion, ES&S, and Hart. Civera’s software is trusted by 10 states and dozens of counties and municipalities,” the site also states.
Tarrant County is the second jurisdiction in the country and the first in Texas to deploy the software, reported the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“In case nobody’s noticed, there’s an election coming up in November that I’m sure people are going to be very, very interested in,” said Tarrant County Election Administrator Clint Ludwig, per KERA.
“We look forward to providing this data and letting them sit at home and peruse at their convenience, not the government’s convenience,” he added.
The system currently only has information from this year’s March 5 primary, however, more election data will be added going forward Ludwig said.
In spite of the move to be more transparent, some groups, such as the League of Women Voters, sent a letter to the Justice Department about the software this past June expressing concerns over voter privacy, per Fort Worth Star-Telegram.