Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has stepped up with a reminder to local government bodies about the importance of redacting personal voter information on ballots, based on a Public Information Act request. By law, Texas voters are guaranteed the right to keep their ballot choices private, which means any related records requests must respect that privacy by redacting identifiable info.
The office of Attorney General Paxton clarified this stance back in August 2022, in what seems to be a quite straightforward legal opinion obtained by the Texas Attorney General's news release, stating "Any personally identifiable information contained in election records that could tie a voter’s identity to their specific voting selections must be redacted," and this mandate was set into the legislative stone in 2023; however, here we are in 2024, and Paxton's office finds itself having to underline, highlight, and circulate this point once more.
May 2024 brought about yet another formal opinion from Paxton's desk, emphasizing the essentiality of redaction to uphold voters' secrecy rights. The continuity of these rulings spotlights a recurring concern that county officials may not be fully adhering to the instructions for maintaining ballot secrecy.
Counties are now, more than ever, under the microscope to ensure voters' confidential data stays that way—after multiple advisories, formal legal opinions, and the state law nodding in agreement, it’s clear that Paxton means business and the "requirement of secrecy is mandatory," Paxton has said in a ruling that stressed, without equivocation that "election records custodians must redact such personally identifiable information."
