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.

Pennsylvania: A Pennsylvania County’s Election Day Nightmare Underscores Voting Machine Concerns | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

It was a few minutes after the polls closed here on Election Day when panic began to spread through the county election offices. Vote totals in a Northampton County judge’s race showed one candidate, Abe Kassis, a Democrat, had just 164 votes out of 55,000 ballots across more than 100 precincts. Some machines reported zero votes for him. In a county with the ability to vote for a straight-party ticket, one candidate’s zero votes was a near statistical impossibility. Something had gone quite wrong. Lee Snover, the chairwoman of the county Republicans, said her anxiety began to pick up at 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 5. She had trouble getting someone from the election office on the phone. When she eventually got through, she said: “I’m coming down there and you better let me in.” With clearly faulty results in at least the judge’s election, officials began counting the paper backup ballots generated by the same machines. The paper ballots showed Mr. Kassis winning narrowly, 26,142 to 25,137, over his opponent, the Republican Victor Scomillio. “People were questioning, and even I questioned, that if some of the numbers are wrong, how do we know that there aren’t mistakes with anything else?” said Matthew Munsey, the chairman of the Northampton County Democrats, who, along with Ms. Snover, was among the observers as county officials worked through the night to count the paper ballots by hand. The snafu in Northampton County did not just expose flaws in both the election machine testing and procurement process. It also highlighted the fears, frustrations and mistrust over election security that many voters are feeling ahead of the 2020 presidential contest, given how faith in American elections has never been more fragile. The problematic machines were also used in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs — areas of Pennsylvania that could prove decisive next year in one of the most critical presidential swing states in the country.

Pennsylvania: How Pennsylvania could improve voting and elections, according to advocates and experts | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

Pennsylvania is implementing the biggest changes to its electoral system in decades, including an expansion of absentee ballot access, easier voter registration, the elimination of straight-party voting, and tens of millions of dollars for new voting machines. But when it comes to ballot access, those changes, part of a bipartisan deal enacted in October, will only move the state from the back of the U.S. pack to the middle. “It’s clear improvement on the whole to the process — sort of maybe revolutionary only by Pennsylvania standards,” said David Thornburgh, head of the Philadelphia-based good-government group Committee of Seventy. “On the Richter scale of change, it’s not a nine.” So, voting rights advocates and experts, while applauding the changes, want lawmakers and Gov. Tom Wolf to go further. The Inquirer asked for their wish lists. They offered dozens of ideas about voting rights, election security and integrity, and political representation. Some would likely garner support only on partisan lines; others could have bipartisan backing. Some are bolstered by research and proven track records elsewhere, while others are newer ideas. All came from a sense that Pennsylvania can do better, and that election modernization and voting reform should not end with this year’s law.

Pennsylvania: Philadelphia’s Voting Machines Challenged In Federal Court Ahead Of 2020 Presidential Election | Associated Press

A federal court was asked 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 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. 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 bar codes on paper, a format that is neither readable nor verifiable by an individual voter, they wrote in court papers.

Pennsylvania: Philadelphia tests way to ensure no one hacks 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania | Jonathan Lai/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia voters can rest assured Jim Kenney really was reelected mayor this month, according to a squad of data and voting experts from around the country who ran a rigorous statistical test of the results Thursday. But while it’s no surprise that a Democrat won by 80 percentage points in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, it’s notable that the scientists were able to conduct such an audit in the first place. That’s because on Nov. 5, for the first time, Philadelphia used voting machines that leave a paper record of voters’ choices. As Pennsylvania’s counties roll out similar new machines required to create paper trails in time for the 2020 presidential election, the reported electronic returns can now be checked for accuracy. That’s an important change in a state that Donald Trump carried in 2016 by slightly more than 44,000 votes, or less than 1%. Pennsylvania is expected to be critical again next year. “We know we saw in 2016, everybody wondering, was this real, was this not real?” said Kathy Boockvar, secretary of the commonwealth, whose department oversees Pennsylvania elections. In 2020 and beyond, with what are known as risk-limiting audits, election officials will be able to confirm that the text of paper ballots lines up with what ballot-reading machines say. “The stakes are high, people are very passionate, and we have the paper that will be able to show the actual evidence,” Boockvar said. Officials hope the audits will make it harder for bad actors to tamper with the results. They also hope to increase public confidence in elections generally, following what U.S. intelligence agencies concluded was a systematic campaign by Russia to interfere in the 2016 election to boost Trump. (That campaign involved the dissemination of news and information Americans consumed, not the manipulation of actual votes or voting machines.)

Pennsylvania: Last-minute bill amendment addresses scanner, privacy issues at the polls | Emily Previti/PA Post

A bill headed to Gov. Tom Wolf’s desk is expected to address some of the problems experienced by counties that rolled out new voting systems during the general election earlier this month. All counties are required to have election systems in place for the presidential primary next spring. The systems must use paper ballots or generate paper copies of electronically cast votes, under the terms of a lawsuit settlement. More than half of them debuted voting machines during the general election earlier this month – and some experienced problems. The new rules would require counties to give voters more privacy while casting their ballots. The changes respond to voter complaints that their votes could be read by poll workers and other voters when they went to scan their ballot, despite counties providing folders for shield ballots from view. The legislation would also do away with ballot stubs. Voters using a hand or machine-marked ballot tear off the stubs before putting their ballot in a vote scanner.  In York County, the perforations left behind contributed to scanner jams and voting delays.

Pennsylvania: State starts testing new election auditing procedures | Emily Previti/PA Post

Pennsylvania’s elections overhaul isn’t limited to deploying new voting machines and making sweeping changes to absentee voting and registration deadlines. Officials also are working on new post-election auditing procedures that employ statistical modeling. Test runs occurred earlier this week in Mercer County and are scheduled for Thursday in Philadelphia. Post-election audits already happen in Pennsylvania. State law requires counties to audit 2 percent of ballots cast – or 2,000, whichever is less – in each race. Other auditing criteria – such as sample ballot selection – are largely left up to county election officials. That’s expected to change in 2022. The state agreed to implement a more robust post-election audit system — called risk-limiting audits — as part of the settlement of a lawsuit brought by 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. “The process that’s in place now is practically meaningless,” Stein’s spokesman Dave Schwab wrote in an email Tuesday. “In contrast, risk-limiting audits are designed to use the paper records to ensure that the machine count didn’t produce the wrong winner.”

Pennsylvania: Northampton County voters want refund for ExpressVote XL voting machines | Jeff Ward/WFMZ

Northampton County should get back the $2.88 million it spent on voting machines, residents told County Council on Thursday night. The ExpressVote XL machines used for the Nov. 5 election had touch screens that were too sensitive, did not record all votes electronically, and the backup paper ballots that were displayed to voters to confirm their choices were hard to read. The county bought machines from Election Systems & Software after Pennsylvania required voting machines that would thwart hacking and provide a paper backup to electronic tallies. “We really need to get our money back,” Gail Preuninger of Bethlehem Township said. Deborah Hunter, who served on the county’s election commission and opposed selection of Election Systems & Software’s machines, said the vendor broke its contract. “I will not use this machine,” said Roger Dreisbach-Williams of Williams Township. He said he will vote via a paper ballot next time, perhaps as an absentee voter.

Pennsylvania: Mercer County conducts first risk limiting election audit | Glenn Stevens/WFMJ

Mercer County is conducting a risk-limiting post-election audit for the first time in Pennsylvania. A working group assembled at the Mercer county courthouse on Monday to perform the post-election audit.   It’s described as a scientifically designed procedure that utilizes math and statistical data to confirm election outcomes. “They’ve found out a way to use the math to provide a statistical certainty that the results that we are reporting accurately reflect that’s what the voters did,” said Mercer County Elections Director Jeff Greenburg. “The math is maybe a little complicated for the average person until you get kind of hands-on experience, and that’s really what we’re doing here today,” according to Jonathan Marks, Deputy Secretary of Elections for Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania has returned to a paper ballot, and the risk-limiting audit is viewed as another step forward for voter confidence and election integrity.

Pennsylvania: 2020 election votes are at stake as a Pennsylvania county plays a game of chicken with Gov. Tom Wolf | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

Dauphin County, home of the Pennsylvania capital of Harrisburg, is starting a high-stakes game of chicken with the state. Republican county commissioners decided Wednesday not to buy new voting machines, defying an order from Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, and all but daring him to take action against the county ahead of the 2020 election. Dauphin has been one of several counties that have resisted buying new voting machines, with its elections director saying the electronic machines used for more than three decades remain secure and usable. The two Republican county commissioners agreed Wednesday not to buy machines. (A third commissionerm a Democrat, did not attend the meeting.) Wolf said he ordered the statewide upgrade to make the voting machines more secure and tabulations verifiable.

Pennsylvania: Dauphin County resists Pennsylvania’s push for new voting machines | Marc Levy/Associated Press

A Pennsylvania county is signaling that it won’t go along with Gov. Tom Wolf’s insistence that counties buy new voting systems as a security measure in 2020’s election, when the state is expected to be a premier presidential battleground. Dauphin County Commissioner Mike Pries, a Republican, said Wednesday that he’s comfortable with the county’s old machines, particularly after hearing about paper jams, long lines and other problems in other counties that debuted new machines in last week’s election. Some of those new machines were under consideration by Dauphin County. “There’s an old saying: ‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,’” Pries said in an interview. “Our machines work, they’re fundamentally sound, we trust our machines, you cannot hack our machines.” Thus far, no other county in Pennsylvania has taken such a hard line against getting new voting machines, now seven weeks before the Dec. 31 deadline that Wolf gave counties to select new machines that have an auditable paper backup. Pennsylvania’s presidential primary election is April 28, and Wolf’s administration has warned lawmakers and county officials that it will decertify the counties’ old voting systems Dec. 31. His administration reiterated Wednesday it has not reconsidered that decision, although it is making exceptions for special elections to fill legislative vacancies before April.

Pennsylvania: ‘You should be pretty worried’: Fixing York County’s election system before 2020 votes | Logan Hullinger/York Dispatch

The maker of York County’s new voting machines pledged to have support on hand for all of next year’s elections after a tumultuous rollout of the system earlier this month that delayed election results for days. A representative for Dominion Voting Systems made the announcement Thursday, Nov. 14, during a debriefing that included the county commissioners, nearly all of the county’s state lawmakers, poll workers and election officials. Kay Stimson, the company’s vice president of government affairs, said Dominion also would work with county officials to reevaluate the number of machines needed in each of the 159 precincts. Based of the problems during the Nov. 5 municipal election, Lawmakers were particularly concerned about the 2020 voting — which includes a special election in January, the primary in April and the presidential contest in November. “If you voted in York, you should be pretty worried,” state Rep. Seth Grove, R-Dover Township, said after the meeting.