Some Texas counties replace touchscreen voting machines after Trump order | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune
After years of using a touchscreen machine to mark their ballots, voters in at least three Texas counties will be asked instead to make their selections directly on the paper ballots, by hand, starting in November. Election officials in Collin, Williamson, and Bastrop counties said they’re proactively changing their voting procedures and equipment in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump in March that sought to mostly ban voting equipment that uses barcodes or QR codes on paper ballots to speed up vote counting. Some other provisions in the executive order have been blocked by the courts, but this one has not. The order instructed the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which crafts the certification guidelines that most states rely on for their voting equipment, to amend the guidelines to prohibit such systems and “take appropriate action” to review and rescind previously issued certifications based on prior standards. Read Article