Brazos County commissioners hear about upcoming changes in how elections are conducted

This podcast contains comments from the July 1, 2025 Brazos County commission meeting.Brazos County commissioners hear about upcoming changes in how elections are conducted.Elections administrator Trudy Hancock reviewed at this week's meeting (July 1), the impact of state lawmakers enacting Senate Bill 2753, which she says "will fundamentally change the timeline that Texas has used since 1987."Hancock says voting will begin voting 12 days before election day (a Wednesday), and voting will continue through election day. "Here in Brazos County we will open our 5 early voting locations, being open for 2 weekends including Saturday and Sunday, with Sunday hours being increased from 6 to 9, then we open the other 23 location for election day.""By voting through the weekend", Hancock said SB 2753 "will increase overtime pay for election workers and comp hours for my staff" and she is "concerned about fatigue for those workers (because) the median age for an election worker in 79." Hancock said election workers who "in the past would have Saturday, Sunday and Monday to rest and prepare for election day", "there will be no break for them", raising the concern of losing election day workers.Hancock also said there will be an increased cost because she will have to move the early voting ballot board from the elections office because early voting will be taking place in that building. The additional cost includes the state requirement that any time the early voting board meets, that has to be live streamed.And another consequence of SB 2753 is that there will be no early results on election night. Since the equipment from early voting will be deployed through election day the only results released at 7:00 p.m. on election night will be ballot by mail results.Hancock also said the final version of SB 2753 does not include eliminating voting centers, which allows Brazos County voters to continue voting at any location.County commissioners were also given an update on a federal executive order regarding elections. Hancock said she is waiting for the Texas secretary of state's office, which is waiting for federal agencies, to finalize changes mandated by the order.The executive order also addresses voting systems should not be used where the vote is contained in a bar code or a Q-R code. Hancock said more than once that the manufacturer of Brazos County's voting system does not use that technology.