Like millions of other Americans, I voted today.

None of that early voting or mail-in ballot business for me; I purposely wait until Election Day itself to go stand in line at my designated poll — no matter how long that line may be or how much time it takes out of my busy day — because I consider this not only to be my civic duty, but a sacred responsibility.

And let’s be honest: After everything that happened in 2020, my trust in “the system” is at an all-time low. I’m a journalist, and I’ve seen and read waaaaaaaaaaaay too much to just believe that I can fill out a ballot and drop it in the mail or online and expect it’s going to turn out the way I intend it to. No — I’m going to babysit that thing every step of the way. I’d hand-walk it over to the counting station myself if I were legally allowed to do so.

This was my first time voting as a resident of Texas, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. But it turned out to be one of the best voting experiences I’ve ever had. God sure knew what He was doing when He uprooted me from California to transplant me into Tarrant County earlier this year.

My Polling Station

Though I’d have been happy to drive all the way across town to vote, I didn’t need to: Unless they live in a precinct that is having a special election for a particular position, Tarrant County has a program that allows voters to choose any convenient polling location — so I could have chosen one by my office (which is in a different town than the one where I live), or one in either of the two towns between those locations if I wanted to.

But since a polling station was set up in a public library within walking distance of my house, I aimed myself thither.

I was expecting a line. But although there was a pathway inside the foyer clearly marked out as a queue, there was no line at all — just a friendly guy standing by the curb in the parking lot asking people if they’d like a Republican voter guide (because electioneering is legal in Tarrant County). I politely declined because I’d done all my research of the candidates and ballot issues online a few weeks ago and printed out my own guide to take with me, and walked inside.

Two more friendly gentlemen standing at the door directed me toward a woman seated at a table, where I presented both my California driver’s license (hey, it’s valid until 2028, and it’s the first good driver’s license photo I’ve ever taken in my life, so I am going to keep using it until someone forces me not to!) along with the Texas voter registration card the Lone Star State gave me back in June. (The registration cut-off date is Oct. 7 in Tarrant County; none of that same-day business going on here. You have to be intentional about these things.)

However, the lovely woman at the table didn’t even look at my Texas registration card; she looked at my driver’s license to confirm my name, then looked me up on the county voter registration database to confirm my actual address, which was correct. As it turned out, the machine she was using was the only one in the room that was connected to the internet.

The Machines

The lovely woman then printed out two receipts for me. One showed my name and address, precinct number, date, polling location, and directions on how to submit tips about election shenanigans to the county sheriff’s office (in three languages); the other contained a bar code. She then directed me toward a young man at a different table nearby, who scanned the bar code and told me to pick up one of the ballots from the stack in front of him.

However, these were like no ballots I had ever seen in my life; there was nothing printed on them. In fact, the long, nearly cardstock-quality sheets looked more like the ballot covers I had used back in the day than anything else; all it contained was a directional arrow at one end. I looked at the young man dubiously as I picked one up.

“Do I have the option of using a paper ballot, or is everything done on the machine?” I asked.

“No, you have to use the machine,” he said. The hackles on the back of my neck went up as my dubiousness turned to suspicion (I may be dating myself horribly by saying this, but the most trouble I want to experience with any ballot I ever cast is a hanging chad).

The young man turned his attention to a machine sitting on the table in front of him in order to print out another receipt for me containing an access code. The machine looked like something you might have found in a junior high computer class in the mid-1980s, or maybe a suitcase bomb — either way, about as analog as one can get. I felt deeply reassured.

I took the access code and my oddly blank ballot to Voting Booth #1. I inserted the paper, face-up and arrow-first, into a kind of printer tray that was sitting in the spot where I had been expecting to fill out a sheet with my own blue or black pen (because I don’t trust those supplied by polling stations; I have actually listened to what election-integrity expert Dave Clements told us all about protecting our vote in the series we ran a few months ago!). I then used the touch screen in front of me to put in my access code, fished my personal voter guide out of my purse, and consulted it as I used the screen to cast my votes in 35 different races.

Once done, the machine gave me the opportunity to review my votes to make sure they were correct. (This is where that printed guide was particularly useful, as a lot of the local names were unfamiliar and I might not have been able to tell if my vote was correct by relying on memory alone.) Once confirmed, the machine asked if I wanted to print my ballot — and said I could not make any changes after having done so.

My ballot was correct, from Trump/Vance all the way down the line. I hit “print,” and the tray began sucking in the long sheet of paper to make my votes a historical fact.

And then I checked it all again, because I still have trust issues.

The Scanner

The last step in the process was to take my printed ballot to a fourth station, where another young man was standing by a scanner that looked like another analog suitcase bomb from the 1980s. This was where my votes would actually be tabulated. When directed, I fed the paper into the scanner, never to be seen again (at least by me), and then walked through the exit door back into the crisp November sunlight.

The friendly electioneering guy by the curb thanked me for coming as I passed him on my way to my car. In return, I thanked him for working the polls (not a job for which many people volunteer). I was nearly to my car when I doubled back and approached him again.

“You may not know the answer to this,” I began, “but how do I know that once my ballot gets scanned, it actually turns out the way I intended it to?”

I was in luck. The friendly guy by the curb was no random election volunteer — he was Ricky Rodriguez, the former executive director of the Tarrant County GOP and a current member of my local city council. And he knew exactly how to answer all my questions, and then some.

Practical Solutions

Rodriguez explained that that the voting machine I had just used was a Hart InterCivic eSlate — not something created by Dominion or any of its problematic digital cousins that were all in the news in 2020. And even though I had technically cast my votes on a screen, the paper printout would be shipped to another location in the county for storage. It also contained a number by which it could be tracked in case any problems arose.

It’s not news that Texas is one of the most conservative states in the nation; according to The Heritage Foundation, it’s currently ranked thirteenth nationwide for the strength of its election-integrity laws, down from sixth place in 2022. And deep-red Tarrant County has some of the strongest election integrity safeguards in Texas.

For instance, the secretary of state doesn’t automatically send everyone a mail-in ballot (the way they did when I lived in California); to get one of those, you have to request one, and then prove that you meet certain conditions. So no one is able to go to a skilled nursing facility to register cognitively compromised people or sign their names to ballots with or without their consent, as we’ve seen done elsewhere. For another, since February 2023, the county sheriff has maintained a special election fraud unit to investigate complaints, which it refers to the district attorney’s office for prosecution when warranted.

With the federal drama of this election season now out of our hands in every way except prayer and intercession, our attention now must turn to the close-quarters combat of county and local elections in the days ahead. Those come up much more frequently and generate far less turnout than national elections do — but they are every bit as important.

I may have landed in a great place for a Christian voter with conservative values, but a lot of our readers may live in places where they are swimming upstream to take a principled stand. When your next opportunity to vote — or to run for office — arises, I sincerely hope you’ll remember some of the things you read here today and push for those kinds of reforms in your city, county, and state.

I left the polls today with my trust in “the system” somewhat restored. May God bless America the way He’s already blessed Texas.

Karla Dial is editor in chief of The Stream.