One interesting thing about voting yesterday was that they changed the voting machines in my jurisdiction. In the previous elections, the machines were fully electronic. No paper trail. That is not the case anymore.
If I am not mistaken, I think that the voting machine that I used was the Verity Duo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABLwA6ynIsgSome people may already be familiar with this new type of voting machine, but this is my first time seeing it. Here's how it works.
After you show your ID (a state ID, state drivers license, passport, or other allowed ID), they give you a special piece of paper and a small slip with a number on it.
They direct you to a voting machine and you touch the screen to begin. You enter the number they gave you. It instructs you to insert your piece of paper.
You then go through your choices one by one. President, Congress, State, County, and Local Elections, etc. Sheriff, Constable, Judges, Justices of the Peace, Railroad Commission, Independent School District, Municipal Utility District, and Flood Control District elections also appear on your ballot. You also vote whether they can raise your taxes or not and on any State Constitutional Amendments there may be. Fun stuff like that.
After you make your selections, it shows your choices on the screen so you can edit it or submit it. Once you are satisfied, you submit it.
With electronic voting, normally that would be the end of it. But with the new machines, it prints out a hard copy of your selections, written in plain English, with a small bar code that contains a tracking number.
You take your hard copy and walk over to the ballot box where it scans your ballot and puts it in the locked ballot box.
Apparently, the voting machine itself does not cast your vote. Instead, your vote is counted when you scan your paper ballot into the ballot box. I am not sure if the ballot box communicates with the voting machine or not, but the documents I saw online imply that the ballot box scans your paper ballot to record your vote.
The result is that the votes can be counted electronically, but there is a paper ballot that can be counted if there is a dispute or a technical failure. And they only have to secure the ballot boxes, and not every single voting machine.
Not all jurisdictions have this type of voting machine, but this one seems to have all the right concepts in place. The benefits of electronic voting and the security of a paper ballot.
Oh, and they look like suitcases.
For more details on voting machines in Texas, they have details on their website.
https://www.votetexas.gov/voting/voting-systems.html#
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