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II. Technical Breakdown: How Voter Data is Embedded into Ballots
A. The Role of E-Poll Books and Ballot Printers
In Dallas County, ES&S epoll books were found to have glitched during a recent general election, failing to complete voter check-ins and printing ballots with repetitive barcodes used to create the "ballot style" for the voter. This malfunction in the ES&S epoll book equipment resulted in an untold number of voters receiving the wrong ballot style— meaning multiple voters received the same ballot tied to a single incomplete check-in.
These ballot identifiers, printed from epoll books directly, or using a peripheral machine to transcribe epoll book barcodes created for each voter, included human-readable and machine-readable codes (barcodes or hexadecimal-like identifiers) that were transferred from the epoll book to the ballot marking device, and then on to the ballot which is then scanned into a thumb drive. In many cases it is known that these incorrect ballots were printed and then unknowingly voted and cast, without these voters even being formally checked in, as the epoll books were stuck on the initial voter scanned in, and kept printing ballots for that original voter only, without anyone noticing. Election judges had no idea the voters they were scanning were not being checked in, and that they were all getting the same ballot style. This lack of understanding of how to conduct computerized elections and detect serious issues has created opportunities for multiple votes to be cast by or on behalf of a single registration without detection.
These system malfunctions were later patched mid-election through a firmware update, raising serious concerns about the legal chain of custody, the auditability of ballots, and the security of the voting process.
B. QR Codes and Access Codes as Data Carriers
In systems like HART InterCivic’s Verity Voting, a barcode generated at check-in is translated via a peripheral controller, typically into a six-digit access code that must be manually entered by the voter into the ballot marking device to create that voter's unique ballot. After voter selections are made, a QR code, and often an additional mysterious number which has gone unexplained by even this author's friend, Heider Garcia, is printed onto the ballot along with the voter selections. The structure of this data pathway suggests a multi-step digital fingerprinting process by which a single code, tied to the voter’s check-in, survives through every step of the voting process—from check-in to ballot generation to casting and potentially beyond.
Election officials claim that these codes contain no voter-identifiable information. However, without full transparency and vendor cooperation—and under threat of legal consequences for inspecting proprietary software—we cannot verify these assurances. The very structure of these systems, as demonstrated by technical audits and whistleblower reports, indicates the presence of relational logic: one piece of data triggering another, across multiple devices, creating a traceable chain.
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III. Legislative and Procedural Failures
A. The SOS Redaction Order and its Implications
The Texas Secretary of State (SOS) issued a directive after the 2024 primary election requiring the redaction of “personally identifiable” information from cast ballot images and election records. This move followed reports—initiated by grassroots investigator Barry Wernick—revealing that ballots across multiple counties could be matched to individual voters using publicly available election data.
Rather than admit to a systemic issue, the SOS sought to cover it up through redactions, thus acknowledging the problem while simultaneously hiding its scale. This redaction policy placed local election officials in the position of determining what data was "personally identifiable," leading to inconsistent application and further violations of transparency statutes.
This undermines the statutory mandate that all ballots must be anonymous at the time of creation and violates public access rights under both state and federal law.