preelection testing of the machines or
adequately train election workers, which would
have caught the errors.
Election commissioners were livid, but unable to
return the machines for a refund because they
are appointees.
“I feel like I’ve been played,” commissioner
Maudeania Hornik said at a December meeting
with ES&S representatives. She later told the AP
she had voted for the devices believing they
would be more convenient than hand-marked
paper ballots, especially for seniors.
“What we worry is, what happens the next time
if there’s a programming bug — or a hack or
whatever — and it’s done in a way that’s not
obvious?” said Daniel Lopresti, a commissioner
and Lehigh University computer scientist.
ES&S election equipment has failed elsewhere.
Flawed software in ballot-marking devices
delayed the vote count by 13 hours in Kansas’
largest county during the August 2018
gubernatorial primary. Another Johnson County,
this one in Indiana, scrapped the company’s
computerized voter check-in system after
Election Day errors that same year caused
long lines.
“I don’t know that we’ve ever seen an election
computer — a voting computer — whose
software was done to a high standard,” said
Duncan Buell, a University of South Carolina
computer scientist who has found errors
in results produced by ES&S electronic
voting machines.
Voting integrity activists have sued, seeking
to prevent the further use in Pennsylvania of