Angelina County election officials excited to see updated voting equipment put to test

ANGELINA COUNTY, Texas (KTRE) - Angelina County election officials spent Monday organizing and distributing voting material to judges ahead of Tuesday’s election, as well as setting up the county’s new voting machines.

Connie Brown, the county elections administrator, said the new machines have been in the works for several years. The previous voting machines were about 13 years old and the elections office felt it was time for an upgrade that would be compatible with the county’s new software system.

The new machines will consist of updated software, electronic ballots, terminal scanners, and printers. Ballots also won’t be required to use WiFi and will be sent directly to administrators to keep votes safe.

“Well, up to this point we have done all of the testing that we needed to be done and, of course, just getting the instructions that the judges need to have a successful election tomorrow," said Brown.

Since then, Brown said they have gone through extensive training sessions and are excited to use the machines for the local election.

“We started out doing all of the testing that we were required to do on it which definitely helped our department to get familiar with everything so that we can feel comfortable to train, and then we started our training process in mid-June, and we trained over 100 people," said Brown.

Steve Smith, Zavalla elections judge, was one of the many people who took part in the training for the new machines and stopped by the election office to pick up his voting material.

“We went through some early training and then we had a half a day’s worth of training on the machine, so we feel like we are ready to vote people tomorrow morning,” said Brown.

The polls will be open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.

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