Luzerne County Councilman questions plan for voters to fill out ballots by hand

Luzerne County Councilman Stephen J. Urban publicly criticized the election bureau’s decision to have voters fill out paper ballots by hand instead of using electronic ballot marking devices at polling places in the upcoming May 16 primary election.

“I think it can pose a problem,” Urban said at Tuesday’s council meeting after county Controller Walter Griffith questioned the plan during public comment.

Election Director Eryn Harvey said Wednesday election bureau management made the decision to use pre-printed paper ballots for a number of sound reasons, and it’s too late to change course this close to the primary. The bureau is compiling a detailed response to issues raised by Urban.

Overvoting, or the voter selection of more than the allowable number of candidates in a race, is a top concern, said Urban.

The electronic ballot marking devices alert voters if they pick too many candidates, forcing them to deselect extras in order to proceed with printing out their ballot so it can be fed into a scanner/tabulator to be cast.

Urban said there is no such control in place for ballots voters fill out by hand, meaning no votes would be counted in a race if a voter fills in too many ovals.

However, the election bureau is working on a plan that likely will address this, the bureau said.

A setting can be activated on the Dominion Voting Systems scanner/tabulators rejecting ballots filled out by hand if they contain overvotes. That way, voters would learn of overvoting on the spot and have the option to remedy the situation with the judge of election at the polling place so their votes would be counted.

Other potential scenarios raised by Urban:

• Republicans receiving Democratic ballots and vice versa.

• Paper ballots not placed in a secure location at polling places.

• A delivery mix-up causing a voting precinct to receive the incorrect batch of ballots and failure to detect the error before voting has started.

• Post-election audit discrepancies when the number of cast paper ballots and returned blank unused ones are compared to the total count of those issued to each precinct.

A council majority had approved the $3.6 million purchase of the Dominion ballot marking devices, scanner/tabulators and related equipment in December 2019 as part of a state mandate requiring a system that provides a paper trail.

Griffith said that was an “awful lot of money” and maintained it is a “bad mistake” to stop using the ballot marking devices.

”There was a lot of deliberation done by council to decide which machines to buy, and now that’s all been thrown away by the bureau of elections deciding in their own wisdom that we’re going to do paper ballots on May 16,” Griffith told council.

The election bureau had publicly presented the plan at the March 6 county election board meeting.

Harvey told the five-citizen board that voters successfully used ballots filled out by hand during a Jan. 31 state senate special election impacting 18 municipalities. The election bureau received a significant level of positive feedback from both voters and poll workers, she said.

While each of the 186 precincts must still have a ballot marking device available for those with disabilities in the primary, Harvey had said the plan would reduce the county’s expense for Dominion to bring a team of 10 or so representatives here for two weeks to program and test all of the approximately 700 ballot marking devices.

Essentially, the plan would free up the bureau to concentrate on other pressing matters before the election and increase the bureau’s workload after the election, when results must be reconciled before certification, Harvey had said.

Several election board members expressed reservations, although four out of five ended up approving a motion supporting the bureau’s plan.

Board Chairwoman Denise Williams provided the lone vote of opposition, saying she believes the ballot marking devices were purchased with public funds and should be used. She also said the devices eliminate “a lot of extra work on the back end,” in part because voters type in write-in selections instead of writing names by hand that must be deciphered.

Williams said Wednesday she has scheduled discussion on the paper ballot plan at the board’s April 5 meeting to ensure training and procedures are in place addressing all concerns.