North Carolina: Despite ‘disappointment’ in manufacturer, election board skips certification to approve new voting systems | Benjamin Schachtman/Port City Daily

The state’s election board has resolved the potential for a major shortage of voting machines — including around $1 million worth that New Hanover County plans to order. The move was not without controversy, as some state officials said the manufacturer held back information about the shortage to force the state’s hand in approving a new model. On Friday afternoon, the North Carolina Board of Elections (NCSBE) voted 3-2 to approve the use of a newer model voting system manufactured by Elections Systems and Software (ES&S) without putting it through a state certification process. Board Chair Damon Circosta cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of the approval, but expressed disappointment in ES&S behavior. “I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed with ES&S, who in their zeal to sell their product lacked candor and were not forthcoming with this agency,” Circosta said. Circosta ultimately cast the vote in favor of fast-tracking ES&S’s new system, saying “my disappointment does not dissuade me from my obligation to North Carolina voters” and noting that the system itself was in line with the board’s commitment to providing election security and transparency, despite its manufacturer’s actions. The issue stems from a 2018 North Carolina law (SL 2018-13) that decertified direct record electronic (DRE) voting systems because they did not create a physical record that could be checked in the event of election challenges, evidence of hacking, or other irregularities. New Hanover County’s Board of Elections has over 100 DRE units.

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.

Texas: Alarming Discrepancies Found in Midland County Election | Matt Stringer |/Texas Scorecard

An investigation into a West Texas school district’s bond election found even more ballots unaccounted for and a locked ballot box that officials cannot explain, leaving the community still looking for answers. The election was held last month on a proposed $569 million school bond for the Midland Independent School District. Unofficial results from election night showed 11,560 votes for the bond and 11,548 votes against, with military and absentee votes still pending. But the unofficial results were flipped going into final tabulation, with the bond failing by 30 votes due to an incorrect reading of the unofficial results from election night that stood uncorrected by the elections administrator for some time. Final results showed 23,631 votes cast in the bond election: 11,803 votes for and 11,828 against the measure. A recount of the results conducted on November 23 found that 11,400 people had voted against the bond, while 11,411 voted for it, giving a grand total of 22,811 voters having participated in the election.

Verified Voting Blog: Letter to North Carolina Board of Elections Regarding Certification Waiver for ES&S EVS 5.2.4.0

Download the Letter (pdf)

Dear Members of the North Carolina Board of Elections,

I am writing to you in my capacity as President of Verified Voting. Please forgive the lateness of the communication as I only recently learned of your meeting today. I am writing to urge the State Board of Elections to proceed with caution and decline to waive certification requirements for the ES&S EVS 5.2.4.0 to allow Mecklenburg County to purchase uncertified ExpressVote HW2.1 ballot marking devices (“BMDs”) for all voters. Not only would such a decision run contrary to North Carolina statutory law, but the failure to carefully examine the differences between this system and the certified system could needlessly expose Mecklenburg County to increased security risks in the upcoming election. Because Mecklenburg County insists on buying computerized ballot marking devices for all voters, the increased risk to North Carolina voters is grave indeed.

As we discuss more fully below, the differences between the two systems in both software and hardware are substantial. We believe elevating the security risk is needless because Mecklenburg County has other options in two certified systems by two other vendors. Additionally, in our view, there is time for Mecklenburg to institute a more secure system in which voters primarily mark paper ballots with a pen and the county also supplies sufficient operable ballot marking devices for voters who need or wish to use them. According to the Board, a prerequisite to use of the certified ES&S system in Mecklenburg County is the use of the system in at least one precinct in the November 2019 election. That has apparently already occurred with ExpressVote HW1.0 ballot marking device. To avoid waiving any legislative requirements, Mecklenburg could institute hand-marked paper ballots that are scanned by the DS 200 and BMDs with the vendor’s existing supply of BMDs. If the vendor represents that it does not have enough systems to even supply a small number of BMDs for each precinct, the State Board of Elections should consider the vendor’s presentation of the system for certification as offered in bad faith, especially if the vendor knew it would no longer manufacture that version of its equipment and would be unable to adequately supply counties that chose it.

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.

Editorials: North Carolina elections board made elections less secure | David Levine/The Fayetteville Observer

Using a barcode ballot system makes it harder to audit election results — an essential election security feature for confirming the outcomes of the election. This past August, the N.C. State Board of Elections made a decision to enable large numbers of North Carolina voters to vote on Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs), which could have made the state’s elections less secure and more vulnerable to malicious foreign actors heading into the 2020 presidential elections. Last month, the vendor for these Ballot Marking Devices told a Board of Elections attorney that they had only one-sixth of the equipment needed to match demand for the 2020 elections under the current certification. To remedy the shortage, the vendor requested that the state certify an updated version of its voting systems through an administrative process that only applies to equipment that do not "substantially alter the voting system," rather than go through an entire certification process which might not conclude before the 2020 election cycle.

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.

Texas: We won. No, you won. Wait! We won! Confusion in a Texas school bond election isn’t going away. | Dave Lieber/Dallas Morning News

Jim Wells County had the infamous Ballot Box 13. It was 1948, and supporters of Lyndon B. Johnson held the box back, and then, miraculously, came up with just enough votes for LBJ to win his first U.S. Senate race. History would be quite different if the future president’s South Texas supporters hadn’t cheated. The fragility of our voting system should not be taken for granted. This can happen anywhere in any election. Midland County currently faces its own threat to the sanctity of its election system. Nobody is officially accusing anyone of cheating, but there are problems galore. Much of the problems stem from the first-time use of new voter machines that are supposed to protect ballot security. Called hybrids, they record a vote both electronically and through a backup paper ballot. Most Dallas/Fort Worth area counties have switched to them or are working on a switch. But, so far, that promised measure of security hasn’t worked in that part of West Texas.

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.”

North Carolina: Bait and switch by ES&S in North Carolina? | Jordan Wilkie/Carolina Public Press

A voting system certified and tested earlier this year for use in North Carolina’s March 2020 primaries won’t be available, according to manufacturer Elections Systems and Software, so the company’s lobbyists have suggested the state quickly approve one of its other systems instead. While the N.C. Board of Elections director has recommended going along with the vendor on the substitution, others see the move as a deceptive bait and switch. One Board of Elections member, Stella Anderson, has objected to the situation, thereby forcing the board to convene a special meeting on the issue. She and others have questioned the integrity of the company and suggested both ES&S and board staff have used language that understates the significance of the difference between the two systems and misrepresents federal government requirements for approving such modifications to voting systems. ES&S has been trying to get its EVS voting system certified in North Carolina since 2017. Litigation between the Republican legislature and the Democratic governor, the 9th Congressional District ballot fraud scandal in 2018, and the resignation of the former Board of Elections chairman delayed certification of the new system until the 11th hour.

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.

Texas: District Judge approved petition to open Midland County ballot boxes | Brandi Addison/Midland Reporter-Telegram

Midland County Attorney Russell Malm filed a petition Friday morning for permission to open ballot boxes from this election season. The petition was approved by Judge David Lindemood of the 318th District Court, and ballot boxes are set to be opened at 9 a.m. Thursday in the Commissioners’ Court located at the Midland County Annex on “A” Street. The request comes after a manual paper-ballot recount, on Midland ISD’s $569 million bond on Nov. 22, showed an 820-vote discrepancy from what the electronic machines tabulated on Nov. 5 and 12. The opening of ballot boxes is just part of an ongoing process of investigation, Malm said. Under the guidance of the Secretary of State, this was the suggested step that should help determine whether the large gap was due to incorrect tallying during the recount or if the electronic voting machines duplicated votes. The Elections Office will open the boxes to see if there was anything misplaced – specifically a tally sheet – and if so, Elections Administrator Deborah Land will make a copy and place it in an original sealed envelope. From there, all ballots will be run through the electronic machines to count the number of votes cast. This will not tabulate how many votes were “for” or “against,” but rather if the numbers match the tallies from the recount or match the votes tabulated on the electronic machines.

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.

North Carolina: Voting machine reliability brought up as concern after issues with similar machines in other state | Paige Pauroso/WBTV

The North Carolina State Board of Elections is taking a closer look at voting machines they plan on purchasing after the same company’s machines were part of an election nightmare in a county in Pennsylvania. The company ES&S makes the Express Vote XL, which was used in Pennsylvania on Election Day in November, but due to what is said to be a programming error, the votes were counted incorrectly. Now, Mecklenburg County said they will do everything they can to make sure the same problem doesn’t happen here if the county gets state approval to purchase similar voting machines made by the same company. The two voting machines are different models and work differently when a voter goes to cast a final ballot, but operate similarly when you’re marking the ballot. Mecklenburg County plans to purchase the Express Vote model instead of the Express Vote XL model. The problems voters faced in Pennsylvania are bringing up some concerns of will North Carolina have enough time to properly test the machines before they’re supposed to make their debut in 2020.

Texas: Midland County officials share update on investigation into ballot discrepancy

The Midland County Elections Office has shared the latest on their investigation into how hundreds of votes went missing during the Midland ISD bond recount. The following comes from Midland County: This is an update on the steps we have and are continuing to undertake to find where the discrepancy has occurred. A telephone conference was held on November 25, 2019 between Keith Ingram and Christina Adkins of the Legal Department of the Texas Office of Secretary of State, and including Terry Johnson, County Judge, Russell Malm, County Attorney, and myself. We were given steps to go through to compare voter check-ins with totals tapes from each vote center, both early voting and election day. We are completing that task at this time.

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.

Texas: Midland ISD canvassing bond election | Victor Blanco, Tatum Guinn, Rachel Ripp/KWES

It's officially in the books: the Midland school board finalized the bond election recount results Tuesday. Everything from here forward will be dealt with by Midland County. This despite a more than 800 ballot discrepancy. People at today’s meeting asked the board to hold off on canvassing the recount until the county gets to the bottom of what happened. “It's disappointing in that there's so many questions left unanswered. That's the part that really I'm having trouble with,” Matt Galindo said. “To know that there's a discrepancy in the amount of votes. I’m disappointed, worried and now have a lack of trust." Midland ISD school board president Rick Davis took the opportunity to explain in detail how the recount process worked Friday. The process included nine teams of three – one representative from each side of the issue and an at-large member were on each team.

Indiana: Vanderburgh County will counter voters who refuse to use machines | Thomas B. Langhorne/Evansville Courier & Press

Suspicious voters who refuse to use voting machines at polling places will have no other option if Vanderburgh County's chief elections officer has her way. County Clerk Carla Hayden said she will seek changes to Indiana law in the wake of a city election that saw three voters at Plaza Park School request — and receive — paper provisional ballots simply because they refused to use machines. The ballots ultimately were counted by election board members who said the voters were eligible. In at least one case, poll worker Don Gibbs said, a voter at Plaza Park explained he is suspicious about voting machines. "He said he just didn’t trust the machines. I didn’t ask why," said Gibbs, the highest-ranking poll worker at Plaza Park. After calling the Vanderburgh County Election Office for guidance, Gibbs gave the three voters — he said they weren't together — paper provisional ballots. By law, provisional ballots are sealed in security envelopes, kept apart from other ballots and acted upon later. Provisional ballots are the only paper ballots available at polling places in Vanderburgh County. Machines, not paper, are the county's method of voting on election day.

Texas: Cause of 820-vote discrepancy in Midland County not yet known | Midland Reporter-Telegram

Midland County Elections Administrator Deborah Land told the Reporter-Telegram it has not been determined what caused an 820-vote discrepancy between Election Day and the recount on the Midland ISD $569 million bond. Land said she has reached out to the legal department of the Secretary of State’s Office and is awaiting response. She has also reached out to representatives from ES&S, the voting machine vendor. “Until I have more information as to how we will be making any determination as to the difference in numbers, I have nothing further to tell you at this time,” Land wrote in an email. The electronic machines counted 23,631 ballots were cast on Nov. 5. When the ballots were counted by hand, the nine three-person teams counted 22,811 ballots total. The recount began sometime after 8 a.m. Friday and ended about 4 a.m. Saturday. Midland County Elections Administrator Deborah Land told the Reporter-Telegram it has not been determined what caused an 820-vote discrepancy between Election Day and the recount on the Midland ISD $569 million bond. Land said she has reached out to the legal department of the Secretary of State’s Office and is awaiting response. She has also reached out to representatives from ES&S, the voting machine vendor.

Editorials: Averting a voting-machine disaster: New York must stay far away from election devices with a proven record of failure | Ritchie Torres/New York Daily News

Imagine spending millions of taxpayer dollars for brand-new voting technology. Then imagine the first time the machines are used in an election, they fail catastrophically. That’s what happened this month across the state line in one Pennsylvania county. How bad was it? Widespread and alarming were failures of this machine, an Election Systems & Software (ES&S) product called ExpressVote XL. Hypersensitive touchscreens picked candidates without voters actually touching the screens. Tick-marks next to selected candidates randomly disappeared. Some machines were unable to tabulate “yes/no” questions at all. In some races, there were “severe undercounts,” including one judicial candidate who received an implausible zero votes, according to the machine’s false reporting. Another candidate won by roughly 1,000 votes, but the ExpressVote XL machine reported 15 votes cast total. Amid the chaos that ensued in this low-turnout election, poll workers were forced to physically pry open the machines, pull out ballot papers and wait for scanners to arrive from outside the state to recount the votes. Weeks later, ES&S has still “has not determined root cause” of the malfunctions, and now reports indicate that lawsuits are likely to be filed against the company and the county. If this sounds like a nightmarish but distant scenario with no practical relevance to us, think again. In fact, if New York City Board of Elections Executive Director Mike Ryan gets his way, the voting technology that catastrophically failed in Pennsylvania will be heading to polling places in the five boroughs for next year’s presidential elections, when turnout will be through the roof.

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.

National: Election vendors should be vetted for security risks, says watchdog group | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

The federal government should start vetting companies that sell election systems as seriously as it does defense contractors and energy firms, a top election security group argues in a proposal out this morning. Under the proposal from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, government auditors would verify election companies and their suppliers are following a raft of cybersecurity best practices. They would also have to run background checks to ensure employees aren’t likely to sabotage machines to help Russia or other U.S. adversaries. The suggestion comes as Congress continues to fight over whether to tighten election security as candidates ramp up for the 2020 election. Senate Republicans, especially, have stalled further security measures, even as observers warn that the next election is ripe for hacking by foreign adversaries such as Russia, which interfered in the 2016 contest. Vendors of voting machines, however, have traditionally been exempt from close review by federal regulators. “These vendors are a critical part of securing our elections, but we haven’t really focused on them at all,” Lawrence Norden, director of Brennan’s election reform program and one of the authors, told me. “We need to understand that they’re critically important but also represent a vulnerability that there needs to be oversight for.”

National: Expensive, Glitchy Voting Machines Expose 2020 Hacking Risks | Kartikay Mehrotra and Margaret Newkirk/Bloomberg

The first sign something was wrong with Northampton County, Pennsylvania’s state-of-the-art voting system came on Election Day when a voter called the local Democratic Party chairman to say a touchscreen in her precinct was acting “finicky.” As she scrolled down the ballot, the tick-marks next to candidates she’d selected kept disappearing. Her experience Nov. 5 was no isolated glitch. Over the course of the day, the new election machinery, bought over the objections of cybersecurity experts, continued to malfunction. Built by Election Systems & Software, the ExpressVote XL was designed to marry touchscreen technology with a paper-trail for post-election audits. Instead, it created such chaos that poll workers had to crack open the machines, remove the ballot records and use scanners summoned from across state lines to conduct a recount that lasted until 5 a.m. In one case, it turned out a candidate that the XL showed getting just 15 votes had won by about 1,000. Neither Northampton nor ES&S know what went wrong. Digital voting machines were promoted in the wake of a similarly chaotic scene 19 years ago: the infamous punch-card ballots and hanging chads of south Florida that tossed the presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore into uncertainty.

Pennsylvania: Northampton County voting machines record questionable results | Emily Opilo & Tom Shortell/The Morning Call

Northampton County officials are rescanning ballots cast countywide after questionable results were reported by newly implemented voting machines Tuesday, prompting the head of the county Republican party to demand a recount. Calling the situation “unfortunate,” Northampton County officials issued a statement shortly before midnight acknowledging a problem with counting votes in some county precincts. Voters reported irregularities throughout the day while voting on the machines, and state officials were contacted, the county officials said. The state instructed the county to use paper ballots, not the machine counts, to tabulate its votes. “ES&S has assured the county and the Pennsylvania Department of State that it is assessing and diagnosing what caused the issues with the machines,” the news release stated. Red flags with the results were apparent as even the earliest returns rolled in. Democrat Abe Kassis initially had zero recorded votes with multiple precincts reporting. Lee Snover, head of the Northampton County Republican Party, quickly called for a recount of the paper ballots in at least the judicial contest, saying “I need to win this race.” “We have a hanging chad moment here in Northampton County,” she said, referring to voting machine issues that caused the infamous recount of contested ballots in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.

Pennsylvania: Key to uncovering Northampton County’s voting machine failure could be weeks away | Tom Shortell/The Morning Call

Northampton County officials still could not explain Thursday what went wrong with their new voting machines in Tuesday’s election, and an answer may be out of reach for weeks. Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure said officials with Election Systems & Software, the company that sold the county the voting machines this year, have not determined why votes could not be digitally counted after polls closed. Votes appeared to be severely undercounted in races where candidates were cross-filed, he said. Until the election results are certified by the state in about 20 days, the machines will be impounded and inaccessible to anyone, McClure said. That means technicians will not be able to dive into the machines’ guts to find what caused thousands of votes for specific candidates to disappear from the digital count. “That is something that is unacceptable and ES&S needs to fix that, and they need to fix that before the next election,” McClure said. Despite the issues, he said he believes the county can rely on the machines’ paper ballots. Those paper ballots allowed the county to count votes by Wednesday morning, including those that disappeared in the digital count.