Pennsylvania: House plans funding for voting machine bill, with conditions | Katie Meyer/WITF
Lawmakers are on track to give Democratic Governor Tom Wolf even more money than he asked for to fund voting machine improvements. However, it will come with conditions. Many of Pennsylvania’s voting machines only record votes electronically. That makes it almost impossible to double-check tallies, and led to the commonwealth settling a lawsuit last year that accused it of being susceptible to election tampering. There’s no evidence tampering happened. But Governor Wolf promised to update the machines by 2020 anyway. It’s an expensive undertaking, so in his budget proposal earlier this year, he asked the legislature to give counties $75 million over five years to help pay for it. Republicans have been on the fence about whether all the machines need upgrades. But GOP Appropriations Committee Chair Stan Saylor said Wednesday, his caucus has decided to back a bill that gives counties $90 million — enough to cover up to 60 percent of the cost of updating the machines.