During a tense ballot order drawing meeting at the Potter County GOP headquarters on Thursday night, several candidates made their positions on using paper ballots known.

As we reported earlier, Potter County GOP Chairman Dan Rogers, a vocal supporter of paper ballots, used the event to make a point about the subject. In protest of incumbents H R Kelly and John Coffee voting to reject a resolution presented by Rogers in favor of paper ballots, Rogers used a deck of cards to determine the ballot order for all races other than Potter County Commission, where Rogers used an “electronic” method involving a random number generator.

Pushing back against this, Kelly polled the room to see who supported keeping the current system. The only hands raised were Kelly, Coffee, and Potter County Tax Assessor-Collector candidate Tamra Read Dickerson. Kelly also asked who supported paper ballots. At that point, a vast majority of the people in the room raised their hands. Among those raising their hands was Kim Gray, who is running against John Coffee, Thomas Warren III, who is running against Dickerson, as well as a proxy for Chip Hunt, who is running against H R Kelly. Precinct 1 Constable Darryl Wertz also raised his hand.

Because the judicial candidates in the room are not allowed to take positions on issues that could come before their courts, most did not raise their hands for either side.

Rogers has repeatedly criticized the current system for not being transparent. When Kelly and Coffee criticized the ballot order drawing, Rogers retorted by stating “that’s exactly what you’re doing to the voters.” He has also criticized the system by claiming that the machines currently used don’t produce a legitimate ballot and that they can be connected to the internet. He also pointed to a controversy in Potter County’s 2022 general election, where an error caused an incorrect candidate’s name to be printed on the paper vote record.

While several conservatives have been pushing for moving to paper ballots in recent years, neither Potter County nor Randall County have budged on the issue. Coffee told The Amarillo Pioneer that his opposition to switching to paper ballots came down to a lack of proof. “If someone actually brings me proof there is a problem with our system, I wouldn’t have a problem changing it. All Dan [Rogers] has is his opinion, not proof.”

Editor’s note: The Amarillo Pioneer Editor Thomas Warren III is a candidate for Potter County Tax Assessor-Collector. Warren had no input or editorial control over this article.