To: Texas Secretary of State's Director of Elections, Christina Adkins
Subject: Violations of Ballot Secrecy and Auditability in Texas Elections
Madam Director,
It is with urgent concern that I write to bring to your attention a matter which has become the central issue for Texas election security and integrity. Under your leadership, and your predecessors which you worked beneath, the Office of the Elections for the Secretary of State has not only failed to uphold critical legal protections for ballot secrecy and auditability but has taken actions that directly violate both state and federal law.
The Countywide Polling Place Program (CWPP)—now implemented across many of Texas' counties—pushed by voting system-sponsored NGOs and their member election officials (public employees)—has eliminated the last available method of voting that guaranteed voters ballot secrecy and precinct-level auditability, both of which are fundamental requirements under Texas and federal election law. Instead of safeguarding these protections, your office has not only actively supported the continuation of a program that makes it impossible to verify election results at the precinct level while also somehow exposing ballots to traceability, but you have even failed to alert the legislature to the issue until it was brought to the attention of the Attorney General by election security and integrity grassroots activists.
Texas Election Code §122.001(a)(1) requires that any voting system used in the state must "preserves the secrecy of the ballot;" This is not a guideline. It is a legal mandate—and one that cannot be satisfied through after-the-fact administrative redactions. Secrecy must be inherent to the design of the system itself. Yet, under your watch, the Secretary of State's Office issued an advisory directing counties to redact information from ballots that are supposed to be anonymous by design, in response to mounting public concerns and confirmed evidence of ballot traceability.
Let me be clear: this advisory is not a solution. It is a cover-up. It is a further violation of both election law and transparency laws relating to public access to election records. The redaction of identifying information from ballots after the election does not and cannot cure the systemic design flaw that has already compromised voter privacy. Moreover, your directive has sown confusion across Texas, as election officials struggle to comply with vague and inconsistent guidance. Counties now vary wildly in their approaches, with no consensus on what information is even considered "personally identifiable"—a debate that should never have occurred, as ballots are mandated to be anonymous by design. Adding information to the ballot which allows it to be traced when cast out of precinct, and then redacting it from the scrutinizing eyes of the public, is totally inappropriate and wholly illegal.
The discovery made by Susan Valiant, and confirmed during the HD108 recount by Barry Wernick, revealed beyond doubt that ballots cast under the CWPP are traceable to individual voters. Rather than act swiftly to address this grave breach, your office instead chose to issue an advisory designed to suppress the enormity and serious implications of this discovery. This amounts to a deliberate attempt to obscure evidence of unlawful ballot tracking from public view, and an abdication of your duty to alert the Texas Legislature to a systemic issue that has persisted for years.
Furthermore, the implementation of the CWPP under these conditions has obliterated the ability to audit even a single precinct’s returns in a timely or cost-effective way, rendering election oversight hollow, unverifiable, untrustworthy. This alone is unacceptable, and when combined with the erasure of ballot secrecy, and the cover-up order, it constitutes an egregious failure of statutory compliance and ethical stewardship.
The people of Texas are entitled to a voting system that protects the privacy of their ballot and the integrity of their election results through an unredacted and auditable paper trail. These are not optional features—they are legal obligations. Your office has failed to meet them and, worse, has now attempted to obscure that failure through redaction orders that have only deepened the problem.
This matter requires immediate public acknowledgment, legislative notification, and a comprehensive plan for the restoration of both ballot secrecy and auditability—beginning with the suspension of the Countywide Polling Place Program and a full accounting of the problems it has introduced.
Respectfully,
[Your Name / Organization]
Is YOUR county participating in the Countywide Polling Place Program? Is your county considering participation in CWPP?
Copy and paste the above text and email to the Secretary of State and CC your County Leadership.
Aubree
takingbacktexas.org
tbtr.us
©Aubree Campbell 2025