Pike County voters getting more comfortable with paper

Amid ongoing concerns about hackable voting systems and foreign election interference, Pike County Director of Elections Nadeen Manzoni said voter confidence in election systems with a paper component is growing.

The county made the switch to new paper ballot machines in time for this year’s May primary and, aside from a few paper jams, has not experienced the problems seen elsewhere in Pennsylvania during the Nov. 5 election.

Manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, the ImageCast Precinct machines combine voter-marked paper ballots with an optical scanner that tabulates the votes.

“It’s a learning curve for us administratively and for the voters to get used to, but to have that paper trail written in the voter’s own hand I think goes a long way, knowing that we can verify the results of our election,” Manzoni said. “As much as I’ve heard grumblings about how we’re going back to the Dark Ages, I think that once you explain to people the benefits of having that paper trail, they’re getting on board more and more.”

Probably the biggest problem on Election Day, Manzoni said, was getting people to slow down when feeding their ballots through the scanner.

“When voters were not waiting, we were getting some paper jam issues,” she said.

Glitches in other counties

In the days following the election, Pennsylvania state election officials were gathering information about Election Day glitches in two counties that rolled out new voting machines.

At that time, a Department of State spokeswoman said York County did not have enough scanners in some polling places and there was a ballot printing issue in a handful of precincts.

State department spokeswoman Wanda Murren said there were also problems with election returns in Northampton County that arose after the polls closed. The Morning Call of Allentown reported that manufacturer Election Systems and Software said it was not sure what caused the problem in Northampton.

“In both cases, voters should know that there is no problem with the paper ballots that they cast,” Murren said in a statement. “These situations underscore the importance and value of our 2018 decision to move to all paper-record voting systems, which are capable of post-election audits and recounts using records that voters verified themselves.”

In late October, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf signed a bill authorizing the state to borrow up to $90 million to help counties purchase new voting machines. The new machines must have an auditable paper backup to make the system more resistant to hackers or other forms of election interference.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.