Clarion County monitoring voting machine action

The 2020 presidential primary election in Pennsylvania is 15 months away, but there is already some controversy.

In settling a federal lawsuit stemming from the 2016 presidential campaign, the Pennsylvania Department of State agreed to require all voting machines to have a voter-verifiable paper trail by the April 2020 primary.

Meeting that goal will require the purchase of a new voting machine for every precinct in the state. The type of voting machine and who will pay for the machines is still undetermined.

“The cost depends on which way we go,” said Clarion County Commissioner Ted Tharan. “There are a lot of different options from paper ballots to ballots that are scanned.”

“Gov. Wolf is proposing that the state pay at least one half of the cost,” said Commissioner Wayne Brosius. “He has to present his budget in February and they are holding his feet to the fire because he is committed to pay for at least 50 percent of the cost of the voting machines.”

The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania says “counties have a significant responsibility in assuring elections remain fair and secure at every step of the process, from verifying voter registrations to training poll workers to counting and certifying election results.

It also includes the responsibility for selection and purchase of voting equipment, which falls exclusively to county government.”

Tharan said that “what scares me is the way they came about this. There are only three approved right now. What if you buy all ($1 million) worth of machines and in two years they find a problem and you have to change everything again.”

“I think it would be smart to look at paper ballots for a couple of years until they get the bugs worked out,” Tharan added. “That way you have the paper ballot and you can always come back and count them if you have to,”

Brosius said the machines presented to the commissioners had a scanner for each precinct. The individual precinct results would then be compiled at a central facility.

“That increases your up-front cost because you have to buy so many of those,” said Brosius.

The administration has indicated it will seek state funding for at least 50 percent of the cost of new systems, or about $75 million of an estimated $150 million statewide cost. The funding would be in addition to federal funds of $14.15 million already available to the counties.

The Commissioners Association said that every dollar that does not come from federal or state funding would be a local property tax dollar. Replacement costs can quickly add up depending on which equipment each county chooses, with nearly 24,000 voting machines operated by the state’s 67 counties.

The latest computerized machines typically cost between $2,500 and $3,000 each, plus central counting systems, supplies, programming and maintenance agreements, the association said.

Clarion County has 40 precincts. If the county’s share of the cost of each voting machine was $1,500 that would be a total investment of $60,000.

“State, federal and county government will need to work closely together to assure that counties have access to a full marketplace of voting equipment that is compliant with state and federal certification requirements and is available to meet timing and deployment needs,” the commissioners association said.