Luzerne County Council briefed on hand-marked ballot plan

Luzerne County Election Director Eryn Harvey appeared before county council Tuesday to discuss the switch to hand-marked paper ballots at polling places in the upcoming primary election.

While Councilman Stephen J. Urban continued raising concerns, Council Vice Chairman John Lombardo and Councilwoman LeeAnn McDermott provided more positive feedback.

“Personally I think this is a good decision,” Lombardo said.

Other counties successfully use hand-marked ballots, including neighboring Lackawanna County, Lombardo said. The change also may be appreciated by voters that have more confidence in paper ballots, he said.

The election bureau decided primary voters at the polls will mark their selections on paper ballots instead of using electronic ballot marking devices that generate ballot printouts for review. Voters will still be required to feed the hand-marked ballots into the county’s Dominion Voting Systems tabulators to be cast, as they did with the printouts.

Lombardo told Harvey poll worker training is his main concern.

Harvey said upcoming training will emphasize workers should be prepared to respond to situations in which voters have selected more than the allowable number of selections in any races, known as overvotes.

Harvey reiterated the tabulators are set up to alert voters of overvoting on the spot. The tabulator won’t accept impacted ballots until the voter decides whether to cast the ballot as is or have their ballot formally voided/spoiled through the judge of elections so they can receive a new one.

Poll workers also will receive training refreshers on the ballot spoiling process, which requires these uncast ballots to be placed in a special envelope and returned to the election bureau for ballot count reconciliation purposes, Harvey said.

McDermott said she is on the ballot in the county council race and still willing to support trying the hand-marked ballots. She noted some voters and council members have expressed distrust about the county’s voting equipment.

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 will 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.

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.

The election bureau received a significant level of positive feedback from both voters and poll workers when hand-marked ballots were used in a Jan. 31 state senate special election impacting 18 municipalities, she had said.

Harvey told council Tuesday she and the rest of the bureau management team decided they wanted to try something new. The change does not have to be permanent, she added.

Urban was critical of the decision to implement the change countywide with a busy local ballot and suggested the bureau perform a “dry run” with a stopwatch to estimate voter processing times.

He also questioned if the four standalone privacy booths at each of the 186 voting precincts will be enough, citing areas with highly competitive magisterial district judge races.

County Administrative Services Division Head Jennifer Pecora said the bureau will have extra booths and tabletop privacy screens from prior elections that can be delivered to polling places if needed.