Chain of custody and handoffs
A chain of custody is the documented trail that shows who handled an asset, when, and where. In elections, it's the difference between an assumption that the ballot box was sealed and proof that it was — signed, timestamped, geolocated, and impossible to rewrite later.
Why it matters
A voting machine travels from the warehouse to a truck to a polling place, sits for a day, then travels back. Along the way, half a dozen people touch it. If any one of those handoffs isn't documented — and a seal later turns up broken — nobody knows who to ask. That's the failure mode chain of custody is designed to prevent.
Texas Election Code §129.051(b) requires two or more individuals at every custody transfer of electronic information storage media. EAC best practices require at least two signatures per transfer, with date, time, location, and a description of the item. NxtAssets enforces both, automatically, because the workflow will not advance until they're captured.
What every handoff captures
Whenever an asset changes hands or locations, NxtAssets prompts for a handoff record. That record contains:
- Parties involved. Who released the asset and who received it — both names and IDs are recorded. A warehouse manager handing off to a transport driver. A polling-place judge receiving a sealed voting machine from a delivery team.
- Digital signatures. Collected on a mobile device or tablet. Each person signs directly in the NxtAssets app to certify the handoff.
- Date and time. Automatic, to the second.
- Location. GPS coordinates when the device has them; otherwise the known site — "Warehouse A" or "Precinct 12."
- Event type. "Assigned to Polling Place 12." "Handoff to Poll Worker." "Returned to Warehouse." Context, not just coordinates.
- Additional notes. Seal numbers, equipment condition, anything the workflow requires at this step.
Why the record can't be rewritten
Every custody event NxtAssets captures is written to a write-once log. Once a record is in, the system refuses to change it or remove it. That rule is enforced below the application — not by a policy someone can override, but by the way the data layer is physically built. Nobody can quietly edit last month's handoff.
Retention is set to match statute. Precinct records under TEC §66.058 — 22 months. Seal and test-material records under §129.024(b) — 22 months. The retention window can be made longer by configuration; it can't be shortened to quietly drop records before their time.
Late in the morning of election day, a polling place calls in: one of the voting machines has a broken seal. NxtAssets opens the asset's custody record and shows the last four handoffs — name, signature, timestamp, GPS — plus the seal event log showing when the seal was applied, who applied it, and its status history. The election director has the full answer inside of a minute, not a week.
Workflow integration
Chain-of-custody checkpoints don't live alongside the workflow. They are the workflow. Default NxtAssets workflows build handoff events into each statutory transition — Truck Loading, Equipment Drop-off, Judge Handoff, Rally Point Drop-off. Staff can't skip them because the work order will not mark the step complete without the signature.
If a jurisdiction has its own procedure — say, a witness signature Texas doesn't require but the county prefers — the workflow can be extended through configuration. No code changes.
What it unlocks
With every handoff signed and preserved, a lot of secondary work gets easier:
- Audit response. When the Secretary of State asks for custody records, the office exports them — it doesn't reconstruct them.
- Public records requests. A FOIA request for chain-of-custody is a report run, not a hunt.
- Internal accountability. Every person who touches an asset knows their name is on the record.
- Post-election review. Custody timelines support after-action reports and next-cycle planning.