Lancaster County is moving forward with a trial program to use electronic poll books in the May 16 primary despite public opposition, including two of the current county commissioners.
The Lancaster County Board of Elections unanimously approved a motion on March 8 to conduct a pilot program using electronic poll books from KNOWiNK, a St. Louis-based election technology company, at seven polling locations in the county in the upcoming primary.
Christa Miller, Lancaster County’s chief elections clerk, said KNOWiNK’s electronic poll books are already used in 36 states and 10 Pennsylvania counties. Miller said she wanted to use their product because the Pennsylvania Department of State has already approved the company’s software to work with the state’s voter database system, allowing for an easier transition if implemented.
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 will digitize the process with voters signing their names on an iPad electronic table.
Miller said the electronic poll books offer several advantages to election workers at the polls and in the county office, including speeding up the process after the election to confirm people didn’t vote twice and allow election workers to point a voter to the correct precinct if they’ve come to the wrong location.
The seven pilot precincts approved for the May 16 municipal primary include:
- Manor Township – Leisure (Faith Bible Fellowship Church)
- Salisbury – Gap (Gap Fire Company)
- East Donegal – Springville (Calvary Bible Church)
- Lancaster City – 3rd Ward (Church Street Towers)
- Manheim Township – 23 (Fieldcrest Building at Brethren Village)
- East Hempfield – Kings and Centerville (two combined precincts at Vietnamese Alliance Church)
“We will still have our regular poll books there,” Miller said. “We will also have on-site help from KNOWiNK that will be coming in. They will have name badges so we will know who they’re with. They will be going to each of the locations. We will also have people in our office from KNOWiNK that day with us, and they will also be coming in to do the training with all the judges of elections on this as well.”
Commissioner Objections
Current Lancaster County commissioners Josh Parsons and Ray D’Agostino spoke before the three-person Board of Elections typically made up of the three elected commissioners. However, all three current members have been appointed to their positions.
Commissioner John Trescot (D) replaced former Commissioner Craig Lehman who resigned from the position in the middle of his four-year term, while President Judge David Ashworth selected former county solicitor Christina Hausner and Common Pleas Judge Jeffery Wright as substitutes for the election board. State law prevents Parsons and D’Agostino from serving on the election board because both are running for re-election this year.
Parsons said changes in Pennsylvania election law since 2018 when former Gov. Tom Wolf decertified all the election equipment across the state and the passage of Act 77 in 2019 added a level of complexity to elections. He said technology can be a benefit for running elections, but it can also cause unforeseen problems.
“It’s not conspiracy theories, it’s concern about our elections,” Parsons said. “We went from a system of elections where for basically 100 years, you had a lot of stability, you had simplicity and you had transparency. And you went from that to Act 77, which, as I’ve said many times, I believe there’s constitutional problems with it. But there’s also huge logistical problems. The logistics of elections became orders of magnitude more difficult.”
Parsons said he was also concerned about the future “significant cost” of implementing the electronic poll books after the free pilot program ended.
“I’m not sure why an interim board of elections would do this right now, rather than continuing to execute the elections we have and try to make them go as smoothly as possible,” Parsons said.
D’Agostino expressed his own thoughts on the pilot program, questioning potential costs to implement the new technology and the sacrifice of potential voting integrity issues in the name of speed and efficiency. He said if he was voting on the program he would be “more than a little cautious.”
“Things are moving very quickly, and so that gives a little bit of concern to the voters,” D’Agostino said. “And, quite frankly, I get it. There’s nothing wrong with that, because people want to make sure their vote was counted and that there’s integrity in the system.”
Community Opinions
Several residents spoke out against the pilot program, saying they had concerns with the technology and KNOWiNK itself.
Danielle Lindemuth, an Elizabethtown Area School Board member and leader of the FreePA Capitol Area Chapter, said the program seemed to be an “exercise in futility” because the county commissioners would be unlikely to approve funding for a new electronic voting system when budgets are already under scrutiny. Lindemuth said she was also concerned about the security of the machines and also that the program was being approved by three unelected board members.
“We already have a system in place that works,” Lindemuth said. “Why are we needing to change something that is going to cost us and require us to do so much extra that really isn’t that secure, especially when last time we were here, there was nobody here that was in favor of it?”
Ephrata resident Melissa Ellis said she researched KNOWiNK and found a report issued in November by the Pennsylvania Secretary of State talking about the different connection settings the poll pads contain. Ellis said the report found the devices contain a “fully-connected mode” allowing data to flow between devices, along with WiFi capabilities.
Miller said KNOWiNK’s modified Apple iPads cannot be connected to the internet in Pennsylvania. She also said even though the KNOWiNK pads use Bluetooth technology to connect to each other, it would not allow the pads to be discovered by other devices.
Ellis said simply having the technology installed on a device worried her about security issues.
“Even though it does have a mode where this could be shut down, it’s still there,” Ellis said. “Could someone access that and turn it back on? It’s just a concern.”
Board Thoughts
Before approving the pilot program, all three election board members gave their reasoning for their vote.
Trescot said he recognized that the county commissioners would ultimately have to vote in the future to go ahead and implement the technology in the election process.
Hausner said she appreciated the concerns expressed by the public, including the two current county commissioners. Hausner said she also understood arguments over the cost of implementing the program, but the fact the pilot program had no cost to the county made it more appealing.
“I also appreciate the concerns that have been expressed by many about the security of this,” Hausner said. “What my concerns were with regard to any jeopardy imposed by fraud have been adequately addressed by the chief clerk and registrar, Christa Miller.”
Wright said he encouraged anyone with “legitimate concerns” over the electronic poll books to come back to the Board of Elections after the pilot program is tried.
“If it comes through, take a look at it and come back and raise your concerns again, and hopefully at that point we’ll have more concrete information,” Wright said. “And you can focus the concerns on specific things that happened during any pilot process. I also like the price.”
Staff writer Michael Yoder is an award-winning journalist who has been honored with several Keystone Press Awards for his investigative pieces.
