Ezra also noted that two of the counties named as defendants in the lawsuit—Williamson and Bell—have taken steps to eliminate the use of pollbooks to number ballot paper. The other defendant county, Llano County, does not use pollbooks for the purpose of numbering.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by conservative activists challenging Texas’s use of electronic voting equipment that assigns random numbers to ballots.
According to The Texas Tribune, the lawsuit was dismissed on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra. In his decision, Ezra found that the plaintiffs—who included election activist Laura Pressley and voters from three counties—lacked standing to sue, as the Texas Secretary of State Office has since prohibited counties from using electronic pollbooks to generate and print numbered ballots.
Ezra also noted that two of the counties named as defendants in the lawsuit—Williamson and Bell—have taken steps to eliminate the use of pollbooks to number ballot paper. The other defendant county, Llano County, does not use pollbooks for the purpose of numbering.
The Tribune notes that Pressley filed the lawsuit in 2024 after saying that she had used public records to identify an “algorithmic pattern” that could be used to identify more than 60,000 voters in Williamson County.
As an alternative, Pressley proposed that ballots be sequentially ordered, starting with 1, and then shuffled before being distributed to voters. In court documents, Pressley cited a 19th-century law that provides instructions for sequential numbering. However, the Texas Department of State, as well as the Attorney General’s Office, maintain that the randomized numbering system complies with state law.
The exact methods Pressley used to identify the alleged “algorithmic pattern” remain unexplained. In 2024, a Texas elections official noted that Pressley failed to provide the state with evidence to corroborate her claims.
“I have not seen this algorithm. Nobody has presented it to our office, so we don’t know what they’re talking about there,” Christina Adkins, the state’s elections division director, told lawmakers in the Texas House last month.
“Our attorneys are trying to get us access to that so we can, we can review it, because, sir, if this algorithm does what it purports to do, what these individuals say that it does […] we actually have authority when it comes to certification of any e-poll books,” Adkins said. “We could do something to address that.”
The Texas Tribune notes that another federal lawsuit, filed against Harris County election officials by the nonconservative nonprofit group Public Interest Legal Foundation, also alleges that the county’s voting system violates voters’ right to a secret ballot. That case is still pending resolution.
Sources
Judge dismisses Texas lawsuit claiming that numbering system threatens ballot secrecy
Texas activist frustrates election officials with lawsuit about threat to ballot secrecy
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