A year after Williamson County officials unanimously voted to move away from barcode-based voting, a fresh dispute over electronic voting and potential voter disenfranchisement has erupted.
In June 2025, Williamson County Elections Administrator Bridgette Escobedo recommended purchasing a ballot-on-demand system to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order directing election officials to “eliminate bar codes from voting ballots” in most circumstances.
The commissioners court unanimously approved a resolution to spend more than $1.1 million on new equipment, with the understanding that hand-marked ballots printed on demand would become the county’s primary voting system and that electronic machines would be retained only to meet federal accessibility requirements.
The November 2025 election was conducted under that model, with ballot-on-demand paper as the default and machines offered primarily for voters with disabilities.
But during early voting for the 2026 Republican primary, dozens of ES&S ExpressVote ballot-marking devices have been deployed at every early voting site, and workers have been instructed to “offer and encourage ‘electronic’ voting with bar codes,” according to Williamson County GOP Chair Michelle Evans.
Evans argues the machines are again producing barcode ballots in defiance of both the spirit of the Trump order and the commissioners’ court directive to move to hand-marked ballots.
Multiple Williamson County voters have reported being coached to vote electronically instead of being given paper ballots to mark by hand. Additionally, many of these devices displayed only federal ballot options and only two races, rather than a full primary ballot.
Activists in Williamson County contend that the use of both electronic ballot marking and hand-marked ballots violates state law by constituting two separate voting systems.
According to Evans, the Secretary of State’s Director of Elections, Christina Adkins, has said that ballot-on-demand printers are not legally considered a separate “voting system” and that the ExpressVote and ballot-on-demand setup does not violate the one-system-per-location rule because all ballots are tabulated in the same manner.
She also said a federal-only ballot style had been programmed for overseas and military voters but was mistakenly accessible in polling places and advised Williamson County to ensure in-person voters receive full primary ballots going forward.
Evans countered that explanation, saying the heavy, routine use of the ExpressVote devices far exceeds the narrow accessibility role described when the commissioners court approved the switch to ballot-on-demand.
She warned there is “no way to estimate how many ballots have been impacted and how many down-ballot candidates negatively affected by not having their races presented to voters.”
According to Evans, the Williamson County GOP has “exhausted every option available” to push the elections office to follow state law and court directives. She is now urging residents to contact the county judge and commissioners to demand changes.
