Centre County will have upgraded voting machines in place for the May 21 primary election, and this week about 300 poll workers attended training and education sessions for operating the new system.
In 2018, the Pennsylvania Department of State, on recommendation from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, informed counties that existing voting machines across the state would need to be replaced by the end of 2019.
Centre County Commissioners approved in February the purchase of 200 new machines from Election Systems & Software (ES&S) the same vendor of the county’s previous machines.
At least three poll workers from each of the county’s 91 precincts were required to attend one of three two-hour training sessions held this week by the Centre County Elections and Voter Registration Office.
“The new system that we are implementing on May 21 is an upgrade to our existing optical scan system we have had since 2008,” Centre County director of elections Joyce McKinley said in a news release. “Overall, our poll workers have been very happy with the new system features.”
Systems are required to be paper-based and not connected to the Internet — both of which already applied to the county’s previous machines. Voters will continue to fill out paper ballots that are then deposited into the new scanner and tabulator, ES&S’s DS200 . They also will continue to have the option of using a touch-screen ballot-marking device — the ExpressVote system — designed for people who may be unable to mark an optical-scan ballot. The touch-screen option provides a paper printout that can be reviewed before being placed in the scanner.
The new machines offer upgraded security as well as software that will be supportable into the future. They also offer productivity advantages, including capturing write-ins and printing them out on the results tape so that election workers don’t have to manually create a write-in tally sheet.
The automated process for write-ins was met with cheers at one training session.
McKinley previously said that for the average citizen, voting on the new machines won’t be much different. But for those who want to get a feel for what they’ll be using on Election Day, one of the machines is set up in the lobby of the elections office at the Willowbank Building, 420 Holmes Street in Bellefonte.
The public also will have the opportunity to test the machines at 10 a.m. on May 16 at the elections office.
Centre County is one of nine in Pennsylvania that will be ready to implement new voting machines for the 2019 primary. A total of 28 counties have approved purchases or leases of new machines.
The total cost of Centre County’s new machines was $1.2 million, including $860,571.75 for the equipment and $332,000 for a five-year hardware and software maintenance agreement, as well as set-up and training. So far, the county has been offered a $180,027.57 Help America Vote Act Election Security grant — its share of $14 million awarded to Pennsylvania for new election machines — to offset the cost of the new equipment.
As part of his 2019-20 budget proposal, Gov. Tom Wolf has also proposed $15 million a year for each of the next five years to help counties across the Commonwealth pay for the new voting machines.
