Shannon Barnett’s non-partisan whistlestop tour for ‘cost-effective, simplistic, and verifiable elections’ held another event before a live audience, this time in Denton, with a simultaneous live stream on Rumble.
She began her speech on Friday by noting that the polling company Rasmussen Reports had found that 83% of Americans were concerned about election security. To this point, confidence in elections has been extremely volatile among Republican and Democratic voters in every election since at least 2008.
Barnett made a broad appeal to Texans, citing their ability to effectuate change and achieve great objectives. She pointed to famous Texans like Audie Murphy, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, and general-turned-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, among others, as just a few examples.
Her reform plan can best be summarized by her mantra: “hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots cast in-precinct.”
She uses France and Germany as examples to bolster her proposition. Both countries have an electoral process similar to what she advocates for, and neither suffers some of the disaster scenarios she claims her opponents constantly say will happen: “Oh, you’ll be counting ballots for three years.”
Barnett reminded listeners that Texas used to use such a system without issue, but she argued officials opted instead to sacrifice security to make voting more convenient.
Texas has some unique issues with ballot security, and this is part of why Barnett wants to see a return to “in-precinct” voting.
Aside from some confusion and long lines at the polls, which she attributes to the adoption of county-wide voting in the late 2010s, prominent political figures have had their primary ballots leaked in a number of cases.
Former Texas Republican Party chair Matt Rinaldi had his primary ballot identified and leaked this past spring due to a series of legal loopholes and public records request laws that apply to citizens who vote outside their precinct. Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX), a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, also purportedly had his ballot leaked.
Barnett says these leaks call into question the legality of Texas’ elections since the state’s election code requires ballots to be “secret,” among other requirements.
Rather than tackle the numerous moving parts of a complex legal battle that would likely end up in the courts, Barnett said she wants to take the simplest route to election security
“Our main objective is to go before the [county] commissioners and say this is [what needs to change],” Barnett said.
She noted that most needed reforms can be accomplished quickly with the approval of county commissioners, who have broad power to change electoral systems in their jurisdiction. Her point is supported by the fact that hand-marked, hand-counted ballots are already legally approved in Texas. They are used in many counties, such as those in West Texas, and counties already have contracts for ballot printing because they must deal with absentee ballots.
Fortune has favored Barnett in recent days. She has been zig-zagging across the state, taking her campaign directly to county commissioners, and in some places, like Dallas County, current events have accentuated her points.
Barnett recently spoke during the public comment portion of the Dallas Election Commission’s June 20 meeting. Her remarks followed an exchange between Rtr. Lt. Colonel Allen West, chair of the Dallas County Republican Party, and Heider Garcia, Dallas County’s elections administrator.
West asked if Garcia had a plan for Dallas if it suffered another major election-day power outage. More than 100 polling stations were disabled in May on election day due to power outages stemming from severe weather. Garcia acknowledged his administration had no such plan.
In Barnett’s view, this is another reason to make a change now, before the all-important presidential election in November. The Dallas Express asked Barnett if she thought a return to hand-marked, hand-counted ballots was the solution to the power failure issue.
“Yes is the ultimate answer because a power outage would become irrelevant in preventing the process from taking place,” she said.
“The election process reverts back to being solely dependent on manpower, just as before [in previous elections],” Barnett added. “Nothing else is needed except for a big box of battery-operated flashlights for voters to participate.”
She also said hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots cast in-precinct are more verifiable than other systems, partly because of their inherent paper trail. Some of the alternative systems available in Texas that she takes issue with have been pilloried by other inquiries on election security.
“Texas uses a few different methods of voting. Texans cast their votes by paper ballot (which is counted either by hand or by using an optical scan system) or by using a Direct Recording Electronic system (DRE),” VoteTexas.Gov’s website reads.
However, in 2005, the bipartisan election reform commission led by former President Jimmy Carter took issue with these recording systems.
“The accessibility and accuracy of DREs, however, are offset by a lack of transparency, which has raised concerns about security and verifiability. In most of the DREs used in 2004, voters could not check that their ballot was recorded correctly. Some DREs had no capacity for an independent recount,” the commission’s report read.
Recently, on the Cowtown Caller podcast, Barnett responded to questions about the cost of conducting an election with paper ballots. Paper ballot skeptics often argue that they are expensive to print and count.
However, Barnett contends that such arguments do not consider the reality that many counties rent, rather than own, their voting machines. These rentals cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.
Moreover, when a jurisdiction switches over to county-wide voting, she said that state law requires the entire county to switch to digital voting machines, even if certain precincts prefer another system or find it cheaper to use hand-marked ballots.
She also elaborated on her strategy.
“We want to finish this process in June to take action in front of the county commissioners in July,” she said. “For election protocol [changes], it has to be adopted in a certain [statutory] time frame.”
When Barnett closed her remarks in Denton, she did not deny that such changes could have a national impact.
“So goes Texas, so goes the nation,” she reminded the audience.
Then, she played her organization’s new PSA and pointed them to the My Vote Counts In Texas website, where she encouraged Texans in every county to sign the petition.
