Lancaster County is debating the idea of testing electronic poll books in some local voting precincts, using them in some in the upcoming May primary.
County elections director Christa Miller made the request for a pilot program during the Feb. 8 Lancaster County Election Board meeting, asking to try electronic poll books from KNOWiNK, a St. Louis-based elections technology company.
The existing poll books at voting precincts consists of large binders of names and verification signatures of each voter in which voters sign their names beside the existing signature. The electronic poll books digitize the process with voters signing their names on an iPad electronic tablet.
Miller said the elections department wants to look at piloting the program in three to five precincts in the spring. She said they wanted to test the system during a municipal primary when voter turnout has typically been lower so that the system won’t be overloaded in a presidential election year.
The test precincts would include a small, medium and large example, Miller said, along with one in a nursing home since many of the voting precincts around the county are located in nursing homes. She said she would also like to put a test poll book in a Spanish-speaking precinct in Lancaster city.
“We’re really looking at which ones so we feel we could be able to get as much information as we could,” Miller said.
During the test, Miller said, KNOWiNK would bring some of their employees to the election sites on election day and also be in the election office. They would visit the polling sites to make sure the equipment is functioning properly, along with providing pre-election training to poll workers. Existing paper backup poll books would also be sent to the precincts in case of equipment malfunctions, she said.
Miller said by using electronic poll books, her department would be able to reconcile voting totals the day after the election instead of weeks. She said it currently takes a full month after an election to get all the poll books scanned into the system and that “there’s human error in poll books.”
“It’s just something I would like to look into piloting, not something that would be obviously a full go across the county,” Miller said. “This is not a cheap endeavor to look into. But I do think the first step to take would be just simply to pilot it to see how it works within our county and then look at steps going forward after that.”
Miller did not provide information as to the cost estimate for the KNOWiNK system in Lancaster County.
According to Verified Voting, a nonprofit organization cataloging voting systems across the country, six Pennsylvania counties are currently using the KNOWiNK poll book system. They are Bucks, Dauphin, Susquehanna, Venago, Warren and Wayne counties. A total of 15 Pennsylvania counties use electronic poll books, including neighboring Berks County.
The election board did not vote on Miller’s request, but board chair and current Commissioner John Trescot said a video demonstration of the KNOWiNK system will be presented during the board’s March meeting before deciding whether to enter a pilot program.
Citizen Concerns
Miller’s request drew concerns and comments from several residents who questioned the reliability of KNOWiNK’s system and electronic voting systems in general.
Ephrata resident Melissa Ellis said she saw many “red flags” when looking at the capabilities of the KNOWiNK system, including the ability to link into a web-based monitoring platform through a Wi-Fi connection, causing a potential security issue. Ellis also cited a report produced by Los Angeles County after its 2020 primary election in which voters were faced by long lines at precincts and other technical problems, with KNOWiNK being cited as the likely source of the problem.
Danielle Lindemuth, an Elizabethtown Area School District board member and member of FreePA, said “red flags flew everywhere” when she saw the potential electronic pilot program listed on the agenda. Lindemuth said she was “very concerned” that the possibility of the electronic pads linking to the internet even existed, allowing for manipulation.
“I don’t just want an iPad that doesn’t have the cellular turned on,” Lindemuth said. “I don’t even want that option in there, because we know how human error is. We know how people are. We know how nefarious things can be. And so the option of having it even in there and able to be turned on, to me is just setting us up for failure and for the opportunity for something nefarious to happen down the road.”
Trescott said the election board wanted to be proactive to let the public know ahead of time that the electronic poll books are being examined.
Fellow election board member Common Pleas Judge Jeffery Wright said he appreciated the public speaking out on the issue and “keeping an eye on it.”
“If you keep going with your concerns and the like and you bring it our attention, then we can show and see it in real life, whether that’s a potential problem or somebody has thought of that problem and solved it for us,” Wright said.
Staff writer Michael Yoder is an award-winning journalist who has been honored with several Keystone Press Awards for his investigative pieces.
