Norco takes first step to reassure voters that machines will work OK in April 23 primary
Northampton County began testing its voting equipment Monday, the first step in trying to reassure voters in the April 23 primary that they won't see the kind of problems that marred last year's election.
“We're hoping that the public comes and sees these tests that we're running,” said county Elections Registrar Christopher Commini after running paper mail-in ballots through scanners that tally votes.
Over the first four days of next week, the county will finish its preparations by testing all of its voting machines.
“We just want to be as open as possible, that we're making the changes necessary to ensure these machines are working.” He added that usually no one from the media covers the testing, but Monday journalists from four news outlets were there.
All counties are required to test their voting equipment before an election, but Northampton’s pre-primary examination took on added importance because of the problems last November. That’s when “yes” and “no” votes for two state judicial retention questions were reversed on a printout reviewed by voters. There was also an insufficient number of emergency paper ballots available when the county suspended voting machines for about two hours.
Lessons learned from the county’s difficulties, which received national attention, prompted the Pennsylvania Department of State last month to advise counties to plan for all scenarios in its voting machine tests and to have a sufficient supply of emergency paper ballots available.
Commonwealth Secretary Al Schmidt said the state is also increasing training opportunities for election officials to better prepare them.
“We've created a training team to train new election administrators,” Schmidt said in a recent interview. “And offered training to all election administrators to try to prevent any mistakes from occurring. So one is like a prophylactic: You want to stop mistakes from occurring. That helps strengthen confidence and results when you’re preventing things from occurring.”
The error in the county’s machines was discovered shortly after polls opened at 7 a.m., prompting county officials to suspend usage of the machines at its 156 precincts. In the meantime, people cast votes on emergency paper ballots while county officials and representatives of the voting machine vendor diagnosed the problem.
They concluded the machines properly tabulated votes for the judicial retention question – the error showed up only on the printout – and directed voters to resume using the units. No other contest on the ballot, featuring state judge and county, municipal and school board contests, was affected.
Previous stories about Northampton County voting machines
Northampton County certifies election results despite opposition from large crowd
Nearly 2,200 emergency paper ballots cast in Northampton County when voting machines weren’t used
With the county’s machines, voters make their choices on a touchscreen. They then review a printout of their selections, which they compare to their on-screen selections. If the selections match, voters submit their choices, and the printouts are collected as backups.
While the voting machines were not used, other problems surfaced. Several dozen voters and poll workers, at a Nov. 21 meeting of the county Election Commission, reported contradictory instructions from poll workers, a lack of privacy when filling out paper ballots and some people being told to return later to vote.
Election Systems & Software, the Omaha, Nebraska, company that manufactures the county’s ExpressVote XL machines, admitted the problem resulted from a programming error by one of its employees.
The error was not discovered during what’s known as logic and accuracy (L&A) testing of the machines several weeks before the election because no one included the yes-and-no vote scenario for the retention questions.
At the county Government Center in Easton on Monday, election office workers made sure scanners for paper ballots worked properly. They did, correctly tabulating votes on nearly 3,000 sample ballots.
The voting machine testing will begin next Monday and continue through Thursday at the county warehouse at the Gracedale complex in Upper Nazareth Township. On Friday of that week, party officials can examine the machines.
“After those four days are over, we have what's called a machine inspection, where the [political] parties can come in and they can review all the results that we've calculated for the test,” Commini said. “So they can go over everything that was done.”
The state's new 25-page pre-election testing directive on March 7 outlined what counties should do.
The section focused on eliminating the problem that plagued the Northampton County machines: “Test decks should encompass scenarios including votes for all ballot positions. … After printing each ballot [during the test], review the ballots produced … to ensure the printed ballots match the choices that were made on the screen.”
“We updated a directive on logic and accuracy testing to make it far more prescriptive,” Schmidt said. “Very explicit in terms of what counties should be doing when they're conducting L&A testing to try to prevent things like that from occurring.”
The state on March 11 also offered guidance on emergency paper ballots. Northampton County provided 20 emergency ballots to each precinct for the Nov. 7 election, but some precincts reported running out of those ballots while the machines were not in use.
The state said counties must have a sufficient supply of paper ballots for each voting precinct that is equal to at least 20% of the number of registered electors in a district. Counties should also have procedures in place to promptly supply polling locations with more emergency paper ballots, if needed.
But Northampton plans to exceed the state guideline, having 30% of the emergency paper ballots available for each precinct; each precinct will begin the day with 100 Republican and 100 Democratic ballots, with more available by delivery from the county, if needed.
“Making sure that enough emergency paper ballots are available on location is important because most malfunctions are likely to occur at the opening of the polls. This is also traditionally one of the busiest periods of voting during the day. Ensuring that voting can occur uninterrupted during this critical time frame is extremely important,” the directive said.
Last November was the second time the county experienced problems with the ExpressVote XL machines. The first occurred in November 2019, when the county first used the machines in a general election. Votes for one candidate in a county judge election were significantly undercounted on the totals reported on the computer. Scanning the paper printout for each voter determined that the candidate, Abe Kassis, actually won a seat on the court.
ES&S apologized for those problems, saying they resulted from programming errors by some of its workers. The county’s voting machines have continued to be certified by the state. The county paid $2.8 million for the machines in 2019 under a five-year contract that expires this year.
Matt Munsey, chair of the Northampton County Democratic Committee, was one of a handful of observers at Monday’s testing of the scanners. He said it’s important for election officials to show they are working to eliminate any Election Day problems.
People need “to know that we’re catching problems. Obviously flaws popped up twice. There wasn’t any evidence that anyone did anything unintentional or nefarious in both of those cases . … I think acknowledging that, and I think it’s really good that there’s a lot of media attention to this because that can hopefully provide a lot of that reassurance.”
Glenn Geissinger, chair of the county Republican Committee, also attended the scanner testing. He was satisfied that the state issued new directives to address the problems that occurred in the county, but asked, “Why is it always reactive to issues? … The truth is why can’t we just say we’re going to have it 100% right from the beginning. I realize that life’s not that simple, but I’m really hoping we can get this working the way it should be because we need to.”
He then explained why it’s critical to get everything right, particularly for the November election.
“We need to have a flawless election in Northampton County because everything says there are three swing counties in Pennsylvania that can decide who the next president of the United States could be. When you look at the electorate … it may very well come down to three counties in Pennsylvania, and we’re one of them. There’s going to be microfocus by everybody on what tests were run, how were they run, what the logic behind them is.”