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A federal judge Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by conservative activists who challenged the use of electronic voting equipment to randomly number ballots in Texas on the grounds that the practice compromised ballot secrecy.
Judge David Alan Ezra of U.S. District Court in Austin ruled that the case, filed in 2024 by longtime Texas election activist Laura Pressley and voters from three counties, was moot because the Texas Secretary of State’s Office has since prohibited counties from using electronic pollbooks to generate and print numbers on ballot paper.
He also wrote that two of the counties named in the suit, Williamson and Bell, had taken steps to eliminate the use of pollbooks to number ballot paper, and that the third, Llano County, doesn’t use them for that purpose.
In court filings, Pressley had said she used public records to find what she described as an “algorithmic pattern” that could link more than 60,000 voters in Williamson County, north of Austin, to their ballots and expose how they voted, though she did not reveal her exact method.
Ballot secrecy has become a growing concern in recent years, as Texas passed laws that made it easier for the public to access various election records and datasets — anything from voter lists to the labels on election office computers and printers. Votebeat and the Texas Tribune in 2024 reported that the increased availability of records made it possible, in limited instances, to determine the ballot choices of individual voters, compromising their right to a secret ballot.
Following that reporting, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office directed counties to redact any information on election records and materials released to the public that could tie a voter to their ballot. Election officials have offered other solutions to address the state’s ballot secrecy concerns, but Texas lawmakers have yet to take action to tighten access to any publicly available election records.
In court filings, Pressley argued that ballots in the three counties she named in the lawsuit included unique identifier numbers generated and randomized by electronic pollbooks, the devices that are used to check in voters at polling places. Pressley alleged that these numbers were key in allowing ballots to be traced back to voters, though she didn’t specify how.
Pressley argued the ballots should instead be numbered sequentially, starting with 1, and then shuffled before they are issued to voters to protect ballot secrecy. She cited a 19th-century state law that calls for numbering ballots sequentially, but for years, the Secretary of State’s and and Attorney General’s office have said that randomized numbering complies with the law.
Pressley has sued at least twice before over ballot numbering, but those cases haven’t gone anywhere. Ezra said that Pressley and the other plaintiffs may file similar claims in the future, but they can’t “be based on facts alleged in this case.”
Pressley told Votebeat in an email that she’s planning to appeal Ezra’s ruling. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment.
A federal lawsuit against Harris County election officials filed last year by the national conservative nonprofit group Public Interest Legal Foundation also alleges that the county’s voting system violated at least three voters’ right to a secret ballot. The plaintiffs allege that Harris County officials failed to follow the state’s directive and released unredacted election records. The case, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Houston, is pending.
Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org
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