Pennsylvania: Get ready for ePollbooks: Northampton County Council bucks recommendation | Kurt Bresswein/Lehigh Valley Live

Going against the Northampton County Election Commission, county council on Thursday night voted to allocate $311,140 needed to purchase electronic pollbooks in time for the April 28 primary election. The ePollbooks have been a contentious topic, following problems with the county’s new touchscreen paper-ballot voting machines that marred their debut last November. The election commission a week ago voted to recommend council not approve the purchase of another new piece of technology for the polls. Election officials were left with little alternative, according to county Executive Lamont McClure. Pollbooks are needed to ensure people are properly registered to vote at their precinct. But under Act 77, the overhaul of state election law adopted last October, complete pollbooks can’t be printed in time for the election and the paper version would slow the tally of election results — possibly for weeks, officials said. “We have to give this county the tools to have a functioning election,” Councilman William McGee said. “They need the tools, whatever the tools are, to have a functioning election. Bottom line.” Thursday’s meeting occurred against a backdrop of chaos in Iowa with tallying caucus results in the nation’s first contest of the 2020 presidential election.

Pennsylvania: Sweeping changes to Pennsylvania election law could make early voting a norm | Deb Erdley/Tribune-Review

The heat is on — and it’s getting hotter for election officials across Pennsylvania as the April 28 presidential primary approaches. A new state election law that allows, among other things, no-excuse mail-in balloting 50 days before an election, coupled with the introduction of new voting machines in 22 counties, including Allegheny and Westmoreland, could prove the perfect storm this spring. In letters posted Friday, a coalition of civil rights and voting integrity groups voiced concerns that some Pennsylvania voters could be disenfranchised if county election officials don’t act quickly to comply with provisions of the new law.

Pennsylvania: Northampton County Election Commission Board says no to electronic poll books | Peter Blanchard/The Morning Call

Fears of another Election Day fiasco in Northampton County have public officials feeling uneasy about implementing modernized voting technology — even at the risk of waiting weeks after votes are cast for official election results. Despite the urging of Northampton County Director of Administration Charles Dertinger, the election commission board voted 4-1 Thursday against recommending a roughly quarter-million dollar purchase of 350 electronic poll books ahead of the April 28 primary election. Last week, Tenex Software Solutions representatives provided a demonstration of the electronic poll books — iPads containing Apple’s encryption technology and reconfigured to disable Wi-Fi capabilities — to election board members and County Council last week. Dertinger requested the board make its decision at that meeting, but board Chairwoman Maudeania Hornik said it would be imprudent to rush into a decision given the numerous issues with new voting machines in the November election.

Pennsylvania: New voting machines. Sweeping election reforms. What could go wrong in 2020? | Ford Turner/The Morning Call

Held three months to the day before the Pennsylvania’s presidential-year primary, a legislative hearing on the readiness of the state’s voting infrastructure was a mixture of reassurance and concern. The focal point of those who testified before an all-Republican array of senators on the Senate Majority Policy Committee was implementation of the just-passed Act 77 of 2019, the most sweeping set of Pennsylvania election reforms in decades. Worries also were expressed about voter privacy and delays in seeing the results election night. Faced with the welter of changes state and county officials must adopt before the April 28 primary ― mail-in ballots, changed registration deadlines and the elimination of straight-party voting among them ― the guarded tone was obvious in an answer given by Lehigh County Chief Clerk Tim Benyo. Asked by committee Chairman Sen. David Argall of Schuylkill County what might happen in the coming election, Benyo said, “I don’t foresee anything worse than what we saw in November, even with the addition of Act 77.”

Pennsylvania: Groups challenging voting machine switch gears, counties remain in limbo | Emily Previti/PA Post

More than 2 million voters in three counties will remain in limbo a bit longer after a voting machine lawsuit changed course late Friday. Commonwealth Court Judge Kevin Brobson had scheduled a hearing Tuesday over whether the ExpressVote XL should be shelved for Pennsylvania’s nominating contest April 28, while the court fully considered the case. But late Friday afternoon, the plaintiffs withdrew their motion for a preliminary injunction. They say they’ll instead ask the court to fast-track the lawsuit – but not when that might happen. The change follows a hearing Thursday where the Pa. Department of State’s lawyers said a court action intended to be temporary could have permanent effects in this case. If counties buy and implement new voting machines to comply, they wouldn’t be in a position to switch back to the XL if the final decision later upholds the machine’s certification, attorney Michele Hangley said.

Pennsylvania: Federal judge delays voting machine case against Department of State | Emily Previti/PA Post

A federal judge on Friday ordered a month-long delay in a case that seeks to bar the use of a specific voting machine in the upcoming presidential primary. Hearings were to begin Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia to determine whether the ExpressVote XL touchscreen tabulator violates a legal settlement that set higher standards for election security in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Northampton and Cumberland counties selected the XL as part of an election system update required of all Pa. counties by the end of 2019. The delay ordered by the judge leaves the counties in limbo. Officials from the counties and the Pa. Department of State say shelving the XL and shifting to different voting systems so close to the election would create chaos for voters. They say plaintiffs could and should have acted sooner — and U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond agreed with that point in the order issued Friday.  A key issue in Diamond’s decision to delay the next hearing until Feb. 18 is the potential that one of the plaintiffs attorneys, Ilann Maazel, could be called as a witness by the DoS. If the state insists on calling Maazel, Diamond said he would remove the lawyer from the case. The delay, the judge said, is intended to give the plaintiffs time to prepare new counsel.

Pennsylvania: More new electronics for voting in Northampton County? Election officials hit pause. | Kurt Bresswein/Lehigh Valley Live

Northampton County officials are considering spending about a quarter of a million dollars on specially configured iPads to check in voters at the polls beginning with the 2020 primary election. County Executive Lamont McClure’s administration sprang the proposal on the county election commission during its quarterly meeting Thursday. Director of Administration Charles Dertinger was looking for a recommendation on the purchase to bring to county council, calling the timeline tight to get the new ePollbooks ordered and delivered. Commission Chairwoman Maudenia Hornik, elected by her colleagues to the leadership role at the start of the meeting, pushed back on having to make a decision immediately. She wants to do her own research on the options available, especially after the problems the county had with new touchscreen paper-ballot voting machines in November’s election. “We just made a huge purchase and we’ve got egg on our face,” Hornik said during Thursday’s meeting at the courthouse and government center in Easton. “I didn’t know we were voting tonight. … i just feel as if I don’t want to do this hastily.”

Pennsylvania: Cumberland County receives ExpressVote XLs as two courts continue to litigate their eligibility | Zack Hoopes/The Sentinel

Cumberland County received some of its new voting machines this week, the same machines that are the subject of state and federal lawsuits and that experienced mistabulations in Northampton County in the last election. Cumberland and Northampton counties, along with Philadelphia, are in limbo regarding the current or future use of the ExpressVote XL, a product of Election Systems and Software. Cumberland County received the first shipments of its 400-machine order this week, according to Bethany Salzarulo, director of the county’s elections bureau. Salzarulo said she and her staff were aware of the Northampton issues, which officials there blamed on ES&S not adequately communicating the necessary testing procedures to elections staff. Proper testing would have caught the errors well before election day, Salzarulo said, something Cumberland County staff is prepared to do regardless of ES&S.

Pennsylvania: Some voting security groups want Northampton County voting machines gone after November malfunction | Bo Koltnow/WFMZ

“They are insecure and administration panels are easily opened and tampered with.” Attorney Leslie Grossberg is talking about the ExpressVoteXL voting machines. The machines used in Northampton County malfunctioned last November causing a paper ballot recount. Grossberg’s clients, voting security groups, recently filed an injunction with the Court of Common Pleas to block the XL in 2020. The groups cite immediate and irreparable harm to the election. “Decertification of the ExpressXL is the goal,” Grossberg said. In December the machines, also used in Philadelphia, received a vote of no-confidence from the Northampton County Election Commission Board.  A state hearing is set that could decide to keep or toss the XL.

Pennsylvania: Voting security advocates seek to block use of Northampton County’s machines | Peter Hall/The Morning Call

Warning of immediate and irreparable harm to the election system, voting security advocates asked a Pennsylvania court to block the use of troubled voting machines in Northampton County and elsewhere in the 2020 elections. Leading a group of Northampton County and Philadelphia voters in a lawsuit over the machines, the National Election Defense Coalition and Citizens for Better Elections filed a motion Friday in Commonwealth Court seeking a preliminary injunction requiring the state to decertify the ExpressVote XL electronic voting system for the April primary and November general election. Citing new information from voters who encountered difficulty using the machines last year and a vote of “no confidence” in the ExpressVote XL by Northampton County election commissioners, the advocates said there is “no way to repair voters’ trust in the machines.” “If voters do not trust the machines, they cannot trust the outcome of the election,” the advocates said. “If that is to happen, the entire state of democracy starts to crumble under the weight of suspicion, distrust and frustration.”

Pennsylvania: Every county will have new voting machines — with paper trails — in 2020 | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

With Dauphin County’s decision this week to end its standoff with the state and buy new voting machines, all 67 Pennsylvania counties met the year-end deadline to comply with a state order that they implement election systems capable of leaving a paper trail of votes that can be manually audited and recounted. Experts say this is a major step for election security ahead of the November presidential election, ensuring ballots can be accurately tallied even in the face of a cyber attack or a mishap. “The shift from paperless [electronic] machines to having individual paper ballots is a sea change,” said Christopher R. Deluzio, policy director of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. “It’s great, it’s huge, it was necessary.” As recently as 2018, most voters in Pennsylvania used paperless machines that recorded votes in electronic memory. In addition to concerns that computers can be hacked, electronic systems can fail and wipe out all records of votes cast. In April 2018, Gov. Tom Wolf ordered every county to select paper-based machines and implement them in time for the April 28, 2020, presidential primary. Dauphin County, after a weeks-long game of chicken with the state, selected its new systems Monday. The machines will cost $120 million to implement in 58 counties, according to data provided by the Pennsylvania Department of State, with no details available for the other nine counties. Not all contracts are finalized, and the figure does not include increased operating costs over the life of the machines.

Pennsylvania: Counties make year-end deadline for picking new voting systems, but still have to contend with changes to state election code | Emily Previti/PA Post

Dauphin County Commissioners voted 2-1 Monday to buy new voting machines – the last jurisdiction to comply with the state mandate that counties update to paper-based, auditable voting systems before the end of 2019. After publicly resisting the state’s directive, Dauphin officials reversed course, averting a potential legal fight with the state and ensuring the county is eligible for election security funding. Costs for the new system – one where voters primarily fill out ballots by hand – won’t be final until sometime in January, but are expected to be about $2 million, according to commissioners chief of staff Chad Saylor. Commissioner Jeff Haste cast the vote against moving forward in contract negotiations with Clear Ballot. “It’s a disastrous solution in search of a problem,” Haste said of the state mandate. Haste and other county officials have said the county’s current touchscreen direct recording electronic machines (DREs) work fine, despite being 30 years old. Haste also said county leaders didn’t like the fact that the state didn’t keep counties apprised of efforts to settle a lawsuit brought by 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in the wake of President Trump’s victory. That settlement, which effectively created the voting machine replacement mandate, was reached without local leaders having input. 

Pennsylvania: Four questions Pennsylvania needs to answer to avert election chaos in 2020 | Emily Previti/PA Post

Pick an issue, any issue. Environmental health? Fiscal conservatism? Probation reform? You’re limited in your ability to influence how elected officials handle “your issue” — or anything else – if our voting systems aren’t secure and reliable. That’s why I’ve spent the past four months or so covering election security in Pennsylvania. Closely. So far, my attention has largely been on the replacement of voting machines throughout the state. That’s meant plenty of travel to observe and document different voting machine configurations at voter demonstrations in more than half a dozen counties. I’ve read, at this point, more than hundreds, maybe thousands, of pages of voting machine contracts and technical documents — not to mention filing the Right-to-Know requests required, in most cases, to obtain them. I’ve also sat through poll worker trainings and covered everything from local controversies to the first test-run of new election auditing procedures that ultimately will be in place statewide. And there will be more to come in 2020.

Pennsylvania: These Two Lawsuits Could Force Philadelphia to Purchase New Voting Machines | David Murrell/Philadelphia Tribune

Who knew something as seemingly mundane as voting machines could generate so much conflict? Then again, maybe we should know better — this is Philadelphia, where nothing related to politics is mundane. So of course the procurement process for the city’s 3,735 ExpressVote XL machines — which we wrote about here — was rife with allegations of impropriety, and an eventual City Controller audit concluded that the city had failed to ensure a transparent purchase without conflicts of interest. And that was before two lawsuits challenging the ExpressVote XL’s certification in the first place. The suits — one filed in state Commonwealth Court, one filed in federal court — share a central claim: that the machines, which were used by both Philadelphia and Northampton counties in November (not without some significant Election Day drama in the latter case), don’t satisfy the requirements of Pennsylvania’s byzantine 267-page election code. Needless to say, the stakes are high. If a judge agrees, Philadelphia could potentially have to return its machines — and after all that conflict! — for new ones that are compliant. We’ve broken down the details of the two suits. … “The ExpressVote XL elevates the risk to unacceptable levels, and some of those risks can’t be mitigated mainly because of the hardware design,” says Marian Schneider, a former Pennsylvania Department of State official and president of Verified Voting, a nonprofit that advocates for transparent elections.

Pennsylvania: Northampton County officials unanimously vote ‘no confidence’ in ExpressVote XL voting machine | Emily Previti/PA Post

Northampton County Election Commissioners unanimously supported a “vote of no confidence” in the county’s new voting machines after vendor Election Security & Software presented findings Thursday night from an investigation into tabulation errors and other problems when the system debuted. The incorrect tallies in last month’s election were linked to races with cross-filed candidates and straight-ticket ballots cast by voters. Cross-filed candidates are ones seeking an office on more than one party line, while the straight ticket option lets voters click one box to select every candidate on the ballot from one party. Voters also complained that the ExpressVote XL touchscreens registered votes they hadn’t cast. Commissioner Kathy Fox said it happened to her. “I didn’t even think I touched it,” Fox said at Thursday’s meeting. “And [the machine] recorded that vote. And so that made me a little nervous. Just because I don’t really think I was touching it.” According to ES&S, a selection on the XL can be triggered by an infrared sensor without the voter actually touching the machine. “It’s very thin, but you can make a selection just by getting just close enough,” said ES&S Vice-President of Product Development Adam Carbullido.

Pennsylvania: No confidence: Northampton County election board calls for new voting machines for 2020 | Tom Shortell/The Morning Call

A month after widespread problems plagued the general election, the Northampton County Election Commission Board voted 4-0 to express no confidence in its new election machines. At the same meeting Thursday evening, representatives of the county’s Democratic and Republican committees called on the county to move away from the machines and perform an independent analysis of the results. “We believe the problems the machines exhibited this year will make it virtually impossible to restore voters’ confidence heading into 2020. We’d recommend avoiding that by not using them again,” said Democratic Chair Matthew Munsey. Despite the bipartisan condemnation of the machines, it’s unclear how county residents will cast their vote in the upcoming presidential elections. Richard Santee, the board’s solicitor, said the decision to reject these machines must be made in conjunction with Northampton County Council and Executive Lamont McClure. Some council members have demanded a refund on the machines, though McClure has continued to stand by them. Even if there was universal agreement, it would be logistically difficult to swap systems in time for the April 28 primary. The board, council and McClure’s administration would have to reach a consensus on getting rid of the machines, selecting a new system, purchasing it, training staff and delivering the machines to the polls in less than four months. “I can’t imagine what we are going to do between now and April,” said Council President Ron Heckman, who attended the meeting as a member of the public. “What’s the alternative?”

Pennsylvania: State officials break silence on controversial ExpressVote XL voting machine | Emily Previti/PA Post

After weeks of silence, state officials have shed some light on their stance that the ExpressVote XL voting machine should remain in use, despite a shaky debut in Pa. during the last election and legal challenges over its shortcomings. In their first public comments about the XL, they laid out their position in 418 pages filed last week in response to plaintiffs’ claims in a federal lawsuit over Pennsylvania’s election system. That case was settled more than a year ago, but plaintiffs led by ex-Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein recently asked a federal judge to enforce the settlement terms. They claim the Pa. Department of State hasn’t upheld the agreement’s parameters for upgrading voting systems statewide by the end of the year. And they’ve asked U.S District Court Judge Paul S. Diamond to order DoS to decertify the ExpressVote XL voting machine, the pick in three Pa. jurisdictions (Philadelphia, Northampton and Cumberland counties).

Pennsylvania: Another lawsuit targets Philadelphia’s voting machines | Associated Press

Pennsylvania is facing another lawsuit over its certification of a voting machine bought by Philadelphia and that was at the center of an undercount in one Pennsylvania county’s election last month. The lawsuit was filed late last week by a pair of election security advocacy organizations and 13 registered voters who live in Philadelphia or Northampton County, where the undercount occurred. The lawsuit asks the state Commonwealth Court to block Pennsylvania’s certification of the ExpressVote XL touchscreen system made by Omaha, Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software. The plaintiffs say the voting system can’t ensure that each vote is properly recorded and counted, doesn’t allow voters to keep their choices secret, doesn’t offer equal access to disabled voters and uses ballot cards that don’t comply with state requirements. Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration declined comment Monday. It will have 30 days to respond in court. In a separate case in Philadelphia’s federal court, Wolf’s administration is defending its certification of the ExpressVote XL.

Pennsylvania: Suit filed in Pennsylvania court challenges widely used electronic voting machine | Emily Previti/PA Post

The Pennsylvania Department of State is facing another lawsuit demanding decertification of the controversial ExpressVote XL voting machine. In addition to conflicting with Pa.’s election code, the XL’s design violates voters’ rights under the state constitution to cast a secure and secret ballot, according to the 224-page lawsuit filed in Commonwealth Court late Thursday by the National Election Defense Coalition, Citizens for Better Elections and 13 individual Pa. voters. The filing comes one day after Election Systems & Software announced the findings of its investigation into problems – including incorrect vote counts in certain races – with XL machines used by Northampton County in the November general election. In addition to Northampton’s tabulation problems, voters there and in Philadelphia, where the machine also debuted, reported other complaints, including over-sensitive touchscreens and excessively long lines. Those experiences are raised in the new filing as proof of the machine’s alleged deficiencies.

Pennsylvania: Northampton County Council presses for assurances that errors won’t occur in 2020 presidential election | Tom Shortell and Christina Tatu/ The Morning Call

Election Systems & Software, the largest voting machine company in the United States, failed to catch errors its employees configured into Northampton County’s new machines, leading to widespread problems this Election Day. Adam Carbullido, a senior vice president with ES&S, said the errors resulted in some voters having difficulty casting ballots. Other mistakes by ES&S allowed a flawed electronic ballot to be distributed to polling places across the county. The errors should have been caught during pre-election testing, Carbullido said, but ES&S failed to properly train county employees and to review the test results. “On behalf of ES&S, I apologize to Northampton County, its administration, County Council members, election officials and staff and, most importantly, to the voters,” Carbullido said Thursday at a news conference in Easton with county Executive Lamont McClure at his side. The Election Day fiasco led Northampton County residents and some elected officials to question the wisdom of entrusting the next election to ES&S’ ExpressVote XL machines. Northampton County Council members have demanded a refund on the $2.8 million purchase, and some have called for a different system for the presidential election. In 2016 the county helped elect Republican President Donald Trump after supporting Democrat Barack Obama four years earlier.

Pennsylvania: Northampton County election fiasco with new voting machines happened because they were set up incorrectly | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

When votes were tallied last month using new voting machines in Northampton County, it was quickly obvious that something had gone wrong. The numbers were so clearly inaccurate that a judge ordered the machines impounded. Scanners were brought in to help count ballots, and voters questioned the integrity of the machines and the security of the election. The fiasco heightened concerns about the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania as the state looks to implement new voting machines in all 67 counties before the April primary. It turns out the machines had been set up improperly, county officials and the voting machine vendor said Thursday, a week after they began an investigation. The machines weren’t prepared to read the results of the specific ballot design used in Northampton County, and dozens of machines had touchscreens that weren’t properly calibrated. Adam Carbullido, an executive at Election Systems & Software, the Omaha, Neb.-based vendor of the ExpressVote XL machines used in Northampton County, said in a statement that the company “takes full accountability” for the mistakes and is reconfiguring the county’s machines.

Pennsylvania: Lawsuit seeks to force Pennsylvania to scrap these electronic voting machines over hacking fears | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Election security advocacy groups are suing the state of Pennsylvania today to stop some counties from using controversial voting machines they say are vulnerable to hacking by Russia and other adversaries in 2020. The suit, shared exclusively with The Cybersecurity 202, comes just weeks after these particular machines had technical issues and went haywire and called the wrong winner in a county judge’s race in November. The groups say hackers could do far worse to these electronic machines if they tried.  Concerns about hacking are supersized in Pennsylvania — a battleground state that could be vital to determining the next president. The ExpressVote XL machines, designed by Election Systems & Software, are being used in three counties that account for about 17 percent of the state’s registered voters, including Philadelphia County, the largest in the state. That’s more than enough to tip a close election.

Pennsylvania: Administration defends voting machines blamed in undercount | Marc Levy/Associated Press

Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration asked a federal court Thursday to reject a challenge to its certification of voting machines bought by Philadelphia and two other Pennsylvania counties, while the machine’s maker accepted responsibility for problems that led to badly undercounted returns in a judicial race last month. In a federal court filing, Wolf’s administration said the plaintiffs, former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and several supporters, knew Pennsylvania was about to certify the ExpressVote XL touchscreen system when the sides settled the election-security lawsuit. “Many months had passed” before the plaintiffs objected to the certification of the machines, made by Omaha, Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software, lawyers for the Wolf administration said in the filing. The settlement agreement’s terms are clear and the ExpressVote XL complies with them, they wrote. The court fight casts doubt onto how 17% of Pennsylvania’s registered voters will cast ballots in the April 28 primary election, as well as next November, when the state is expected to be one of the nation’s premier presidential battlegrounds.

Pennsylvania: How Pennsylvania’s election security lawsuit settlement led to the last minute challenge of the state’s top-selling touchscreen voting machine | Emily Previti/PA Post

Three Pennsylvania counties could end up scrambling to replace brand new voting machines before the 2020 election – a situation stemming largely from the loose terms of the 2018 legal settlement that mandates new voting machines across the state. Plaintiffs led by former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein say one system in particular never should have been certified in the first place and are asking a federal judge to force the state to decertify it. The ExpressVote XL doesn’t meet the agreement’s requirements for paper-based systems that produce auditable results and let voters verify ballots before they are cast, they claim. The Stein plaintiffs made their move about a month ahead of the year-end deadline for Pennsylvania counties to buy new machines, and well after most counties already spent or committed more than $150 million to buy machines certified by the Pennsylvania Department of State. It also comes amid Northampton County’s investigation into why the XL tabulated results incorrectly in some races in the Nov. 5 general election. Philadelphia debuted the machines that day, too, with comparatively minor issues. Stein spokesman Dave Schwab says they’re acting at this juncture, in part, because the settlement requires the parties to attempt to resolve any differences among themselves before seeking court intervention.

Pennsylvania: What went wrong with Northampton County’s voting machines? The analysis is done. | Kurt Bresswein/Lehigh Valley Live

Election night, Nov. 5, came and went in Northampton County without any word on who had won and who had lost. County elections officials had to count ballots through the night, after apparent problems with electronic tabulation on the new Election Systems & Software (ES&S) ExpressVote XL machines in use for the first time. ES&S has now completed its analysis into what went wrong, and the results are set for release during a news conference Thursday afternoon at the county courthouse in Easton, county officials said Tuesday. County Executive Lamont McClure and Adam Carbullido, senior vice president of product development at Omaha-Nebraska-based ES&S, are scheduled to discuss the analysis. McClure’s administration and a representative of ES&S declined to detail any of the findings in advance of Thursday. “A team of experts from ES&S began examining Northampton County voting machines on Dec. 5 after the court-ordered impoundment was lifted,” ES&S said in a statement Tuesday. “During this examination, ES&S applied to Northampton machines the work it conducted at its main facility over the last several weeks to replicate and correct the human errors that caused the Northampton issues. After having the opportunity to review the machines in person, we look forward to sharing our diagnoses on the Election Day issues during Thursday’s meeting.”

Pennsylvania: State warns Dauphin County over defying voting machine edict | Marc Levy/Associated Press

A Pennsylvania county is being told it would lose out on millions of dollars in aid and almost certainly be sued by the state if it refuses to take action to buy new voting machines before Dec. 31, county officials said Monday. Dauphin County Commissioner Mike Pries said that was the message delivered to him during a meeting with Gov. Tom Wolf’s top elections officials last week, a message strong enough to change his mind. “Certainly the message from the state has been received loud and clear,” Pries said. In addition to the threat of a state lawsuit, Dauphin County would be unable to share in state and federal aid to help with a purchase that could exceed $5 million, county officials said. That aid could account for roughly 70% of each county’s tab. As a result, Pries said he has decided to vote to buy new voting machines, seeing it as the best option for the county’s residents and taxpayers. It is just a question of settling on which machine to buy, he said. A spokeswoman for Wolf’s Department of State declined comment Monday. Dauphin County’s other two commissioners have yet to meet with Department of State officials.

Pennsylvania: Voting-Machine Upgrade Stirs a Partisan Clash in Pennsylvania | Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

A partisan clash is unfolding over an effort to upgrade voting systems in Pennsylvania, after Republicans accused the Democratic governor of rushing the deployment of new voting machines, some of which malfunctioned in November. The rift in Pennsylvania—a key battleground state for the 2020 elections—is an example of how election security is becoming a political flashpoint across the country. A spokesman for Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said this week that the state has made significant security improvements and is continuing such efforts. “These inaccurate, political claims only serve to undermine confidence in our election,” said spokesman J.J. Abbott. Election-security efforts elsewhere have attracted controversy as well. On Capitol Hill, congressional Republicans and Democrats have clashed on election-security bills and on whether to give more funding to the states to improve their systems. Complaints at the state level are significant because of Pennsylvania’s potential importance as a battleground state in the 2020 election, and because state and local governments have the primary responsibility for administering elections. At issue in Pennsylvania are reports that some voting machines malfunctioned during a statewide election on Nov. 5. In Northampton County, election workers counted paper records all night. Another glitch was blamed for causing long lines in York County.

Pennsylvania: Philadelphia’s voting machines challenged in federal court | The Philadelphia Sunday Sun

A federal court was asked last Tuesday to force Pennsylvania to rescind its certification of a voting machine newly purchased by Philadelphia and at least two other counties in the state ahead of 2020’s presidential election. The filing casts doubt on how 17% of Pennsylvania’s registered voters will cast ballots in the April 28 primary election, as well as next November, when the state is expected to be one of the nation’s premier presidential battlegrounds. Court papers filed by former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and several supporters accuse Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration of violating their year-old agreement in Philadelphia’s federal court by certifying the ExpressVote XL touchscreen system made by Omaha, Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software. The plaintiffs say certifying the system violates their agreement, in part because the machine does not meet the agreement’s requirements “that every Pennsylvania voter in 2020 uses a voter-verifiable paper ballot.” For one, the ExpressVote XL counts votes by counting machine-printed barcodes on paper, a format that is neither readable nor verifiable by an individual voter, they wrote in court papers. Second, the ExpressVote XL does not use a “paper ballot” and relies on software to record the voter’s choice, they wrote. Third, it is not capable of supporting strong pre-certification auditing of election results because its paper records may not accurately reflect voters’ intent, they wrote.

Pennsylvania: ES&S to report on Northampton County voting machine problems | Jeff Ward/WFMZ

Northampton County’s voting-machine vendor will report next week on what went wrong during the November election and how it can be fixed. The ExpressVote XL machines used Nov. 5 led to long lines and frustration at the polls because the touchscreens were too sensitive and the backup paper ballots were hard to read. Election Systems & Software (ES&S), maker of the machines, will be at Northampton County Council’s next meeting. “ES&S was in Northampton County today reviewing our voting systems,” County Executive Lamont McClure told the council at its Thursday meeting. “They will come next Thursday and tell you what they found and the fixes.” The next council meeting will be Dec. 12 at 4:30 p.m. at the government center. McClure and Council President Ronald Heckman have insisted that ES&S identify and fix what went wrong before the next election. The county paid $2.88 million for the machines after Gov. Tom Wolf required systems across Pennsylvania that would thwart hacking and provide a backup paper trail. Despite the problems, McClure has said the election was fair and accurate because the backup worked.

Pennsylvania: Misplaced votes mean new rules for Erie County poll workers, officials | Matthew Rink/GoErie

After the polls closed on Nov. 5, poll workers at Kury Hall in Millcreek Township suspected that something was amiss. Like all poll workers at the county’s 149 precincts, they were responsible for inserting a device called a PEB that records the votes from a flash drive on each machine and “closes out” the machine so that no additional votes can be recorded. When the PEB generated the results at Millcreek’s 4th Precinct, though, poll workers suspected that it had shown too few votes. “They had some sense that their number of total votes wasn’t correct,” Erie County Clerk Doug Smith said. “But they thought it would all come out in the wash. They didn’t think it was a serious thing and that we would catch it when we did the audit.” What followed was a perfect storm, Smith said, of poor communication between poll workers themselves and between poll workers and elections officials stationed at the Erie County Courthouse. It would result in roughly 400 votes not being tabulated on either Election Night or during the final audit, or count, conducted by elections officials days later. In fact, were it not for the razor-thin margin between Erie County Controller Mary Schaaf and her challenger, Erie County Councilman Kyle Foust, the controller-elect, the missing votes might never have been counted.