As election year begins, key voting issues remain unresolved

Court cases and question of who will pay for new machines

• Emily Previti/PA Post
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  Emily is a reporter for WITF who’s been covering voting and elections since July 2019 as part of her former role with statehouse accountability news organization PA Post. She was the senior reporter for statewide public media collaboration Keystone Crossroads. Previously, she covered city hall for PennLive/The Patriot-News (Harrisburg, Pa.), was a watchdog and city hall reporter at The Press of Atlantic City and reported for the Northwest Herald. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
  
  See other articles by Emily Previti for WITF.

 AP Photo/Matt Rourke

Shown is a paper ballot during a demonstration of the ExpressVote XL voting machine at the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, Thursday, June 13, 2019.

AP Photo/Matt Rourke

A sample ballot produced by an ExpressVote XL voting machine is on display during at the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, Thursday, June 13, 2019. (Matt Rourke/AP Photo)

If you’ve been following along, you already know the state is facing two separate lawsuits (one in state court, one in federal) trying to force the decertification of the ExpressVote XL voting machine. Made by Election Systems & Software, the XL is the touchscreen device purchased by Philadelphia, Northampton (where it had a disastrous debut Nov. 5) and Cumberland counties.

Plaintiffs filed a preliminary injunction late Friday in the Commonwealth Court case, which was initiated more recently and does not involve Jill Stein (her case goes to court in Philly next week). The move is meant to get the case in front of a judge faster than would happen otherwise — and, in this case, the plaintiffs want the court to temporarily prohibit the XL from being used in an election until the case is fully heard. To do that, attorneys laid out evidence they think shows they’ll ultimately win, anyway, and options for running the presidential primary April 28 without using the XL. Watch for more highlights from the 100+-page filing on PAPost.org later today.

The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania’s top legislative priorities this year are rural broadband, county tax reform, restoring/increasing funding for mental and behavioral health services, maintaining/expanding adult probation programs proven to save money and cut recidivism risks, and addressing critical shortages in emergency medical services — particularly in rural areas.

The list didn’t include elections, despite concerns about costs and workload with new machines and changes to state voting laws during a typically higher turnout presidential election year — recently exacerbated, critics say, by holding special elections for a handful of statehouse races separately on March 17 rather than just wrapping them into the April 28 primary. But Lisa Schaefer, CCAP’s new executive director, says that while the issue didn’t make the “top five” list, she and her colleagues are still watching it very closely — in particular, “the implementation of funding and when that will be starting to move forward.”

Schaefer also told me Friday that within the past couple days, counties had crossed a critical threshold for getting partially reimbursed for voting machine costs. Act 77 requires counties to submit a cumulative $50 million in reimbursement requests to the Department of State before the Pennsylvania Economic Development Financing Authority can issue bonds to fund the $90 million rebate pot promised by lawmakers. PEDFA, however, canceled its January meeting originally scheduled for Wednesday. They’re expected to convene next Feb. 18.

Meanwhile, in York County, Steve Ulrich has been named the new director of elections and voter registration. Part of York is included in the special election for the 48th state Senate district this Tuesday, his third day on the job. Ulrich admitted to reporters last week that he doesn’t know much about election law — but county officials say they hired him for his skillset honed during his career in college athletics administration that spanned more than three decades, the York Daily Record reports.

Ulrich grew up in Huntingdon County, attended Franklin & Marshall College and lives in Lancaster County, according to this Fox43 story. He replaces Nikki Suchanic, who stepped down after York’s problematic rollout of its new voting system Nov. 5.

Best of the rest

Mel Evans / AP Photo

(Mel Evans/AP Photo)

• Concerns about voting machines and election security are not, of course, confined to Pennsylvania. The U.S. House Committee on House Administration focused on the topic last week during a two-hour hearing featuring CEOs Tom Burt of Election Systems & Software, John Poulos of Dominion Voting Systems and Julie Mathis of Hart InterCivic. The three companies dominate the U.S. market. Read my story here.

• Burt, Poulos and Mathis told House members that none of their machines in use right now contain remote-access software. In the past, that had been used to allow technicians to troubleshoot remotely. But it was controversial because even connections to other databases heighten hacking risks.

• What wasn’t mentioned during the hearing: the National Election Defense Coalition found voting systems connected to the Internet and sent a letter alerting the Election Assistance Commission to their findings. The NEDC web-scouring tool hasn’t located any connected systems in Pa., at least not yet (the group’s senior technical adviser Kevin Skoglund told NBC News that he and his team are “continuing to find more”).

• The U.S. has stepped up its game in defending against foreign interference in its elections during the past four years – but some of the same vulnerabilities linger, not to mention new threats that officials haven’t figured out how to address, according to a recent piece from The New York Times. “While large-scale hacking of voting machines is difficult, it is by no means impossible,” the NYT reporters note, and “the fear of hacking could be as dangerous as an actual cyber attack  — especially if the election is close, as expected.” Read the full article here.