One way people can register to vote is by applying. Applications can be obtained by contact the Election Administration Office at 904-590-4777 or by emailing sceletion@smith-county.com. (Tyler Morning Telegraph File)

The Smith County Elections Office is updating its voter registration system and enhancing accessibility on its website to ensure a robust democratic process.

“There will be no change in what the voter sees at the polling place,” Michelle Allcon, Smith County election administrator, said about the voter registration software. “The system will operate in the same manner as what is currently in use, and it is state-approved.”

At the county commissioners’ meeting on May 7, the court approved changing its voter registration management software, which stores and manages voter registration data.

“It’s the system we use to actually register voters, to maintain their records, updating their addresses, sending out notices to them, and attaching vote history,” Allcon said. “We also use it to attach specific addresses to specific precincts or districts …mapping those… is how we create the different ballot styles that are used during an election.”

Through the voter registration system, mail-in ballots are tracked and processed, and the election office can run numerous reports, Allcon added. The system has nothing to do with the equipment voters or staff use at the polling location.

The new voter registration software, Voter Focus by VR Systems, replaces the current software VEMACS by VOTEC Corporation. The switch comes after VOTEC sent a notice in March stating the company was experiencing financial difficulties and forced surcharges to ensure continuity of service.

“They did not reach out to amend the contract we have with them, that we just signed last summer, which states the services we are purchasing from them and what fee schedules we have,” Allcon said. “When we received the notice, I did start looking into our options…There are very few vendors in Texas that are approved for use as a voter registration system.”

The Texas Tribune reported 32 counties in Texas use VOTEC’s voter registration management software, which is one of only three companies approved in Texas to manage voter registration data.

“When they’re asking for some of the money that they are not owed yet, that often is a sign of a last gasp,” Commissioners Precinct 2 John Moore said. “We don’t need to take any chances.”

With November elections looming, Allcon said wishing things will go smoothly with VOTEC is a risk. She recommended using the voter registration software Voter Focus, and commissioners agreed.

“The implantation of this project, if it’s done correctly, will take several months, which is why we are wanting to make the change now so we have the time involved to transfer the data, convert the data into this new system, test the data and then be functioning before the November election,” Allcon said.

The process is scheduled to take about three months, with the new system in operation at the beginning of August.

Website updates

Allcon said updates to the county website and election page began after concerns were raised in 2020, alleging they were inaccessible to people with disabilities.

According to the notice from the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, people with disabilities navigate websites in various ways. The visually impaired may use screen readers, which speak the text, and people with manual disabilities affecting their ability to grasp a mouse may use voice recognition software to control their devices.

“IT (information technology) has continually gone through since that initial complaint in 2020,” Allcon said. “When we got…a list of items that we were supposedly not in compliance with, IT started going through and updating, changing and fixing those.”

In November 2023, the U.S. the Justice Department notified Smith County that it was among multiple Texas counties violating Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act by maintaining election websites that limit or deny access to critical information for people with visual or manual disabilities.

The IT department has been addressing concerns outlined in the letter, including:

• Menus and links do not function properly for people with manual disabilities who use a keyboard to navigate the website.
• Improper headings prevent people with vision disabilities from understanding pages’ structure and content.
• Posted documents are inaccessible for people who are blind and use assistive technologies like screen readers.
• The website’s search results page has barriers for people with vision disabilities or who use speech input to navigate the website.

“For many users with disabilities, these barriers make it difficult or impossible to access the website’s information,” the letter stated. “Thus, the county denies people with disabilities equal access to the website and effective communication of the voting information that it contains.”

Don Bell, Smith County Chief Information Officer, said Granicus is the current hosted website vendor and one of the partners with whom the county is working to resolve this issue.

In response to the DOJ notice, the IT department has completed the following work:

An employee was assigned in the IT department to head up website compliance and work on correcting issues on a part-time basis, in addition to their current workload.

A product called Site Improv was deployed, which identifies explicitly issues, rates our website for ADA compliance, and provides a weekly report and roadmap for compliance.

The department deployed a product called Equadox to assist staff in making changes to PDF documents that are not ADA-compliant.

They are also consulting with Group M7 to provide website changes that can be done internally, and the consultation group, along with staff have made numerous changes to headings, broken links and documents.

For Elections only, 454 PDFs were removed from the website that were no longer required to be on the website and have corrected (made ADA compliant) over 365 PDF documents.

Removed 1,719 PDF documents and corrected approximately 900 documents to make them compliant on the entire website with all departments.

More than 1,800 broken links on the website have been corrected.

It has corrected approximately 500 headings that are required to be ADA-compliant.

They reported several items to Granicus to correct as it will require programming on their software (CMS).

The department’s focus for 2025 is to identify an alternate web hosting vendor and create a website that provides best practices for ADA compliance and public communications. The website will include the forms needed by the public but will not be a repository for historical documents as it has been in the past.

“We are working on an alternate location for all electronic documents that are not required to be on our website, to be maintained for public access outside of the website but would still be readily accessible by the public,” Bell said.

Bell said to date, Smith County has not received any complaints concerning ADA from the public and recently received the League of Women Voters of Texas “Outstanding” award relating to the 2024 Primary Election. Only 35 of the 254 Texas counties received this rating and award.

“We are working to make our entire website ADA compliant,” Smith County Judge Neal Franklin said. “We are in talks with the Department of Justice to resolve this matter, and we look forward to continuing working with our partners to make not only our Elections Office webpages compliant but all aspects of our website.”