‘Profoundly disappointed’

• Ed Mahon
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  Ed Mahon comes to Spotlight PA from PA Post, where he covered state politics and policy, produced radio stories that were broadcast on public media stations throughout the state and on NPR’s national newscasts, and co-wrote a weekday newsletter. Prior to joining PA Post, Ed worked for six years as an investigative and political reporter for the York Daily Record, part of the USA Today Network. His reporting on failures in Pennsylvania’s system for protecting domestic abuse victims was a finalist in the national 2018 Livingston Awards for Young Journalists in the local reporting category. He was also part of a team whose coverage of the criminal justice system, including the aggressive use of civil asset forfeiture by York County prosecutors, received the 2018 G. Richard Dew Award for Journalistic Service from the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. Before joining the York Daily Record, Ed covered K-12 education at the Centre Daily Times in State College and worked as a stringer for suburban sections of The Philadelphia Inquirer. He grew up in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

 Min Xian / WPSU

Centre County introduced new ES&S voting machines in the primary on May 21, 2019.

State blasted for secrecy of voting machine re-certification

Min Xian / WPSU

Centre County introduced new ES&S voting machines in the primary on May 21, 2019.

• Election security advocates are criticizing the Pennsylvania Department of State over the way it re-examined an electronic voting machine from a leading vendor. Fellow PA Post reporter Emily Previti and I described the issue in this story. The key complaint: Pa. officials conducted the re-certification process with no public notification.

• In July, those election security advocates submitted a petition to the Pa. Department of State, requesting a re-examination of the ES&S ExpressVote XL electronic voting machine. The department says it re-tested the machine and concluded the system can be safely used by voters provided it is implemented under proper conditions.

• The debate over new election technology in Pennsylvania is part of a broader one nationally. NPR’s Miles Park recently spent time at Defcon, an annual gathering of hackers and computer security experts, where some attendees warned about the vulnerabilities of voting machines.

• “I’ll be damned if, when we’re up against the Russians and all their military and all their cybersecurity might, we’re going to send out the county IT guy,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, told the Defcon crowd. Wyden wants the federal government to do more to ensure everything is done to protect the states’ election systems from foreign hackers.

• In Georgia, there’s a big debate over which voting system is best. AJC.com explains that many cities in the state stuck with paper ballots after the Florida 2000 election debacle (remember “hanging chads”?) to save money or because their existing system was working just fine. The debate in Georgia comes as Democrats continue to press for an investigation into alleged missing votes from the 2018 gubernatorial race.

Best of the rest

Ed Mahon / PA Post

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board received no bids for the right to a sixth mini-casino license. Bid and location boxes are seen before the start of the board’s meeting on Sept. 4, 2019, in Harrisburg.

• Two things I learned Wednesday: One, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board meets near a food court at Strawberry Square in Harrisburg; two, the board uses festive boxes for prospective casino operators to submit bids for licenses (the photo above). No one submitted a bid yesterday, so Pennsylvania will have no more than five mini-casinos, at least for now.

• The Inquirer’s Jonathan Lai explains that Pennsylvania was a model for a North Carolina court case that challenged state legislative maps. Lai talked with R. Stanton Jones, a Washington-based lawyer who was involved in both cases.

• Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wants “a full fracking ban on public and private lands.” That might not be a winning message in parts of Pennsylvania, which you might have heard is a pretty important presidential election swing state. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf wants natural gas drilling to continue — and to use a tax on it to fund a bunch of projects: flood mitigation, broadband expansion, transportation and more.

• In defense of Pennsylvania-native and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, former Pa. Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell writes that “gaffes simply don’t matter to the average voter.”