The Luzerne County Courthouse

Luzerne County’s hand-marked ballot plan dissected

During its Wednesday meeting, Luzerne County’s Election Board exhaustively discussed how the election bureau will carry out a switch to hand-marked paper ballots at polling places in the upcoming primary election.

County Election Director Eryn Harvey also announced voters will use electronic poll books for polling place sign-in on May 16 instead of paper books.

For mail ballot voters, Harvey said the bureau expects to mail the ballots by April 26, which falls before the May 2 deadline. Voters also should receive ballots faster because they will be processed through the Lehigh Valley instead of originating out-of-state due to a printing vendor change, she said.

Also, plans have been finalized to add a ballot drop box at the Wright Manor assisted living facility in Mountain Top for the primary election — an option sought because the Wright Township Volunteer Fire Department is no longer hosting a box. The county also provides drop boxes at Misericordia University in Dallas and two county-owned properties — Penn Place in downtown Wilkes-Barre and the Broad Street Exchange in downtown Hazleton.

Hand-marked ballots

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 a tabulator to be cast, as they did with the printouts.

County Councilman Stephen J. Urban had publicly raised concerns because the ballot marking devices stop voters from picking more than the allowable number of candidates — a practice known as overvoting that would prevent impacted selections from being counted.

However, Harvey said Wednesday the tabulators already are set up to alert voters of overvoting on the spot if they attempt to scan in a ballot containing overvotes. In such situations, voters would have the option to continue casting the ballot as is or having their ballot formally voided/spoiled through the judge of elections so they can receive a new one.

Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams asked if the alert on the tabulator expressly states overvoting was detected, as opposed to an error code message that would be unknown to the voter and possibly poll workers.

Deputy Election Director Beth Gilbert said the tabulator alert would use the word overvoting and not be a code.

Poll workers will be briefed on the overvoting alert and ballot spoiling procedure during training, Gilbert said. For example, voters must deposit their voided ballot in a sealed envelope, not poll workers, so voter privacy is maintained.

A public education release also will be issued advising voters to remain at the tabulator until they verify there are no alerts preventing ballot acceptance, Gilbert said.

Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams grilled the bureau on procedures involving the paper ballots, including some that had been raised by Urban. A synopsis of the issues and responses:

• Sufficient supply of the correct paper ballots to each of the 186 voting precincts.

Gilbert said bureau workers will be verifying the ballots are the correct ones when they assemble supplies that must be placed in judge of elections bags for each precinct. Judges of election also will be reminded to verify their ballots are correct as part of their supply check before the polls open, she said.

The bureau has ordered enough ballots for all registered voters in the unlikely event of a 100% turnout, although much of the stock will be securely stored in the election bureau and delivered only if a precinct informs the county it is running low. Each precinct will receive more than the statutory limit of blank ballots, based on past primary election turnout, said Gilbert and Harvey.

• Blank ballot packaging

The vendor is supplying 50-ballot increments, each sealed in plastic. Poll workers must wait to unseal a new pack until they are sure it will be needed.

Williams recommended poll workers count all ballots when they open a package, saying a vendor miscount could throw off reconciliation when the number of cast, spoiled/voided and blank ballots are added up to ensure they equal the total supplied to a precinct.

Gilbert said poll workers are free to double-check the count to verify the vendor was correct, and bureau leadership could discuss if poll verification should be required.

• Republicans receiving Democratic ballots and vice versa.

Poll workers will be responsible for making sure they give each voter the correct party ballot, as they would when they have to insert the applicable party ballot-loading card into the ballot marking devices, Gilbert said. This will be stressed during upcoming poll worker training, she said, noting voters also will be reminded to check their ballots and notify poll workers if they receive the wrong one.

• Ballot security at polling places

Ballots still wrapped in plastic must be safely kept where they are not accessible to voters inside polling places, and the unpackaged ones should be kept out of reach under the control of poll workers, Gilbert said.

When introducing the hand-marked ballot plan last month, 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 had 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 had expressed reservations, although four out of five ended up approving a motion supporting the bureau’s plan. Williams provided the lone vote of opposition, saying 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.

A county 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. With the exception of the ballot marking devices, the rest of the Dominion system will be used in the primary, officials said.

County Controller Walter Griffith was visibly upset after listening to the more than two hours of discussion Wednesday.

“I’m livid,” Griffith said during public comment. “You have a whole ballot full of candidates, and they should be scared to death.”

The cost of programming the ballot marking devices should not be cited as justification for not using them because the county’s state Election Integrity Grant funding would cover the programming expense if necessary, the controller said.

Griffith said there are too many mixed messages and changes, pointing to electronic poll books.

The election bureau had switched from electronic poll books to paper ones in the November 2022 general election, with staffers saying the electronic ones were reaching their end of life and had created problems for some poll workers wrestling with technical issues.

Harvey, who became director in February, said the electronic books will be used in the primary because they have been inspected, tested and are properly functioning, with the exception of eight that will be repaired and returned by supplier Election Systems & Software.

“The last time we were told poll books were on their last leg. What is wrong here?” Griffith said.

Some election board members and Griffith also complained Wednesday when they learned the county administration last week moved sheriffs into former courtroom space at Penn Place that the board and bureau had used to process mail ballots and perform adjudication. To avoid transporting ballots outside Penn Place, which houses the election bureau, the bureau is now forced to set up another smaller space in the building in the remaining weeks before the election.

Griffith said he would have been willing to move because he has too much space in Penn Place based on the size of his staff.