Lubbock County could replace its aging voting machines in 2027 or wait until 2029. Elections Administrator Troy Havard told Lubbock Lights he would avoid introducing new machines in 2028 because voters and poll workers would be using them for the first time in a presidential election year.
“You do not want to go into a presidential cycle, whether it’s the primaries or the presidential race itself, using that system for the first time,” Havard said.
Havard will brief commissioners on the equipment options Monday. The only action he’s asking them to take is to canvass the Nov. 3 election results.
Havard said commissioners would have to find the money to buy in 2027 or plan ahead for a 2029 purchase. He’ll brief them on Hart InterCivic’s Vanguard system, which meets the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s newer voting system standards.
The county lists two quotes from Hart InterCivic, its current vendor. One is labeled as an option without Hart’s Vault scanner, a device that reads paper ballots and records voters’ selections at the polling place. Lubbock Lights could not verify the price of either option from the posted materials.
The county’s agenda memo says its current Hart Verity system is nearly a decade old and vendor support is winding down. The county’s maintenance agreement with Cranel, the company that services two central ballot scanners, runs through August 2027. The memo says Cranel has told the county this will be its last year servicing those scanners.
The discussion follows a scanner malfunction at an early-voting site during the November election. Elections Administrator Troy Havard told Lubbock Lights last week that the county rescanned 5,681 paper ballots from that site to make sure they were counted accurately. The rescan contributed to a delay in the release of Lubbock County’s unofficial election results until early Wednesday morning. In April, a separate voting-machine malfunction led the county to use emergency paper ballots at some polling locations.
Havard also wants to change how the county manages voter registration
Havard will also brief commissioners on voter registration. He wants the county to consider using a third-party system to manage its voter-registration database and continue exchanging data with the state. Havard said the county would still be responsible for the accuracy of its records. Lubbock County previously cleared a backlog of more than 8,000 voter-registration records delayed by a state software failure.
He’ll also brief commissioners on moving to four-digit voting precinct numbers.
The special meeting starts at 9 a.m. Monday, Nov. 16, on the fifth floor of the Lubbock County Courthouse, 904 Broadway. The voting equipment briefing is item 3 on the posted agenda.
Official meeting agenda · Voting system memo
