OBSERVATIONS:
The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 specifies that the Secretary of State shall maintain a single database of all voters in the state. This list is to be the list used in all federal elections by all counties in the state. However, in Bexar County, we have observed the poll books use a different database (taken from the SOS) and then placed in a 3rd party vendor server somewhere on the internet with no oversight or audit capability. We have no way to audit this file or verify if it contains ONLY the names in the SOS database.
CONCERNS:
Fraudulent voters could be added to the voter rolls and there is no capability to detect this. Once a voter has completed the check-in through the poll book, a ballot is issued and the ballot cannot be traced back to a specific voter. The ballot could then be credited to another voter. The 2020 Election Report from the TX SOS identified an incident in Dallas County (https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/fad/2020-Audit-Full.pdf) where at least 188 voters checked in to vote but the computers credited a different voter with casting the ballot. This was called “phantom voters” and a fix has not been identified to this date. The report stated there may have been more phantom voters in addition to the 188, but records were not adequate to verify. Without transparency and auditability, we cannot verify that additional names are not being added to the voter roll database used by the pollbooks. In addition, the new KnowInk pollpads have removed the paper trail of requiring a signature from each voter that checks in to vote. We MUST have transparency of the voters that check in to vote and be able to prove through an audit they are valid voters.