Voting company makes 'coercive' demand of Texas counties: Pay up or lose service before election

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Voting company makes ‘coercive’ demand of Texas counties: Pay up or lose service before election

BY NICHOLAS RICCARDI
Updated 4:16 PM EDT, April 5, 2024

A voting company owner on Friday acknowledged making a “coercive” demand of 32 Texas counties: Pay an additional surcharge for the software that runs their voting registration system, or lose it just before November’s elections.

John Medcalf of San Diego-based VOTEC said he had to request the counties pay a 35% surcharge because several agencies in multiple states, including some of the Texas counties, have been late to pay in the past and his company had trouble meeting payroll.

He characterized the charges as a cry for help to get enough money to avoid losing key employees just before November.

“It is coercive, and I regret that,” Medcalf said. “We’ve been able to get by 44 of 45 years without doing that.”

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/election-texas-voter-registration-surcharge-vendor-67e8ed3ec2572b622a38e24fbde860d0

[ms liberty]

1. Maybe those counties want to have problems on election day?

It would certainly create chaos in those 32 Texas counties.

[IbogaProject]

2. We need to opensource this stuff

Our elections shouldn't be run on a private company's machines. We should standardize to paper ballots read by a scanner, and some way to keep the paper ballots for random audits and as backup in case of any issues.