Public invited to check out new Luzerne County electronic poll book options

Luzerne County’s election bureau will hold a public demonstration of new electronic poll book options next week at the county courthouse on River Street in Wilkes-Barre, county Election Director Eryn Harvey announced Wednesday.

The devices are used for voter sign-in at polling places on Election Day.

The county purchased the current electronic poll books for $325,000 in 2018 from Election Systems & Software to speed up voter processing and allow poll workers to instantly search and redirect voters who show up at the wrong polling place.

Harvey said she cannot support using the current poll books in the Nov. 7 general election because they are out of date and had too many problems in the May primary. Even though they had been inspected and tested in advance to ensure they were properly functioning, some polling places had to register voters on paper due to battery problems and other issues, she had said.

The bureau publicly sought proposals from poll book suppliers last month, and there were three responses by the July 17 deadline, records show:

• Election Systems & Software, $431,290

• Knowink LLC, $437,300

• PCC Technology Inc., doing business as CIVIX, $938,740

Harvey said only the first two vendors — Election Systems and Knowink — have been invited to the public demonstration because the cost for the PCC Technology system is out of the county’s price range.

According to the request for vendor proposals, the county sought pricing for an initial purchase of 220 poll books, with an option to buy more units within a year. The county has 186 voting precincts.

No funds have been earmarked for the purchase, and the administration is researching whether electronic poll books are eligible for coverage under the second annual Pennsylvania Election Integrity Grant. The administration has received positive indications from the state but no final decision, officials said.

State officials started providing the annual grant last year to help counties cover the rising costs of holding elections. Funding allocations are based on the number of registered voters within each county.

The county received $1.04 million in the first annual allocation, which covered the November 2022 general election and May 2023 primary. The county’s total voter registration was listed as 205,242 in the 2022 general election, online records show.

Approximately $1 million is expected for the upcoming general election and 2024 primary because the county’s voter registration has dropped to 195,565, officials said. The registration has decreased because new registrations are not keeping pace with losses from the ongoing purging of voters due to death, relocation and the failure to actively vote over a period of time, officials have said.

The poll book demonstration will run from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Aug. 3 in the courthouse rotunda, with the public reminded to enter through the courthouse basement security station on the west side of the building facing the Susquehanna River.

Acting Deputy Election Director Emily Cook has designed an electronic feedback survey for attendees to provide input on which system they liked best and the reasons, Harvey said.

The bureau plans to brief the county’s five-citizen Election Board on its findings at the board’s next meeting on Aug. 16, Harvey said.

All vendors that submitted proposals must be equipped to accommodate the county’s anticipated Nov. 7 general election implementation of the new equipment.

Harvey said the county would have to use paper poll books in the upcoming general election if new electronic books are not in place.

The county had opted to use paper poll books in the November 2022 general election because of uncertainty about the electronic books. Harvey has said she does not like paper poll books, noting poll workers struggled to direct misplaced voters to the correct polling places in the November 2022 general because that information would have been at their fingertips with the electronic books.