bulletproof postelection audits. Republicans say
the federal government should not impinge on
states’ authority to oversee elections.
Northampton County, on Pennsylvania’s
eastern edge, mirrored the state’s choice in
2016 by voting for Donald Trump after twice
choosing Barack Obama. Last Election Day,
it became ground zero in the debate over
ballot-marking devices.
The county’s new ExpressVote XLs failed doubly.
First, a programming misconfiguration
prevented votes cast for one of three candidates
in a judge’s race from registering in the bar
codes used to count the vote. Only absentee
ballot votes registered for the candidate, said the
county executive, Lamont McClure. The other
problem was miscalibrated touchscreens, which
can “flip” votes or simply make it difficult to vote
for one’s desired candidate due to faulty screen
alignment. They were on about one-third of the
county’s 320 machines, which cost taxpayers
$8,250 each.
One poll judge called the touch screens
“garbage.” Some voters, in emails obtained
by the AP in a public records request, said
their votes were assigned to the wrong
candidates. Others worried about long lines in
future elections.
Voters require triple the time on average
to navigate ES&S ballot-marking machines
compared to filling out hand-marked ballots and
running them through scanners, according to
state certification documents.
ES&S said its employees had flubbed the
programming and failed to perform adequate