Collin County residents get a look at voting machines
COLLIN COUNTY, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) — Call it an open house of sorts.
On Friday, Collin County's elections office invited the public to see how they test voting machines for accuracy.
Carol Sewell and Nancy Robertson, both Republicans, were among the three-dozen people who showed up.
Robertson said, "We want things to work, and we want our Collin County elections to be secure, but if you don't question, you don't know."
Sewell said, I wanted to understand the system better. People are no longer trusting the system, they're not trusting a lot of anything in our society anymore."
Tom Adair, Chair of the Voting Rights Committee of the Collin County Democratic Party said when he came to the county's public test before the November 2020 election, it was a lot less crowded. "I was the only person here, so this is a very different scene and situation this time."
Collin County's Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet said each of the state's 254 counties must test all voting machines for accuracy before and after every election.
It's been this way for 30 years.
Sherbet said, "You test it by running through test ballots, testing every variable on the ballot, every office on the ballot, every proposition on the ballot. You test against over-votes and under-votes to see the equipment is counting and accumulating results accurately."
But because some members of the public have questioned the process after the 2020 election, some counties including Collin are demonstrating the process publicly.
Tarrant County held a similar event last month.
Sherbet said, "We know that people have some concerns about the process and the best way we can help them feel better is to be transparent, bring people in."
In addition to the accuracy test of voting machines, Collin County also allowed residents to vote a sample ballot and watch them tabulate the results.
Afterwards, teams of elections workers then hand-counted the results to verify the machine counts, and Sherbet said they all matched.
Some people have expressed concerns voting machines could be hacked, but Sherbet said that's not possible in Texas because the machines aren't connected to the internet. "There's no connection, modems, internal, external into voting equipment and by law, by state law, you can't have that."
Adair praised Sherbet and how his office operates. "I think we need to have confidence in the results of our election."
As a precinct chair for the Collin County GOP, Nancy Robertson said she does all she can to make sure people vote. "But if you do all that work and it's all for naught, if this isn't secure, it's a total waste of time, total waste of time and that is why this is important."