Regarding the WCM 1-25-24 front page article on our County voting equipment, I have worked for/with the election’s office for 16 years. I have set up and run polling locations in all four of Wood County precincts and numerous sub precincts. I was employed by the county to write training manuals for election workers and judges and to occasionally conduct their training including equipment setup and the placement of ADA compliant voting machines.  Mr. Phillips is new to the elections office and has never worked in an election before. It is understandable he may not know how to do this.

The WCM and their readers would benefit if the WCM would institute a policy of verifying information rather than just printing libelous accusations. Getting the story right is far more valuable than sowing the seeds of contention and reporting on that.  

The polling location referenced in your article is Quitman City Hall, the county’s smallest polling location. To be “tucked into a corner” as you reported, the ADA machine would have to have been up on a platform. I would never allow anything like this in my polling location! The machine was set so close to the ballot marking table that a voter seated at the machine could easily shake hands with a voter seated at the marking table.

The preprinted paper ballot is significantly different from the summary printed by the machine where the voter never gets to see the whole ballot in context until printed. This has caused under voting in races across Texas. Additionally, machine summaries are written in fragile thermal ink which caused them to stick together in the past election and had to be reoriented to be read by the scanner in some situations.  The scanner does not read the list of candidates the voter reads; it reads a QR code written on the summary which the voter cannot read. We have no way of knowing if the candidate printed is the candidate the machine counts. Voters should be aware of this.

Terrell AronSpeer

Quitman