Bidding for Ballots

A desire to update equipment purchased in 1996 and to address potential security and vote integrity concerns are two factors that motivated Montgomery County officials to announce that they will be issuing an RFP in March of this year for the purpose of replacing and upgrading the equipment used to record and tabulate votes. There are 425 polling places across the County, utilizing approximately 1150 voting machines each election (ten polling places are located within Lower Providence). Polling places have 2-3 machines apiece.

Toward that end, County commissioners Val Arkoosh and Ken Lawrence [both serve on the Board of Elections, Lawrence as its chairman] hosted an open house on Saturday, February 24, 2018 at Montgomery County Community College to give the public an opportunity to view the vendors and products vying for the chance to provide the latest technology, test them out and to provide feedback about those products and potential selection criteria.

Ideally, the new equipment could be in place as early as the November 2018 election cycle, but a Voter Services employee told me today that it was far more likely that it would be available for use by voters for the first time in 2019, given the need to train a large number of poll workers and communicate all the changes in the process to the voters who will use it.

The crowd consisted primarily of elected committeepeople and poll workers, and a smattering of the general public. Two categories of change were shown:

1)  New way to check in -- touch screen and potentially less need to have check-in clerks at the table inside the poll; and  

2) Different approaches to casting a ballot.

First, the check-in process is now all electronic regardless of selected vendor, but seems to be less of a process, mostly verifying the voter and signing, which people do now.

As for the 11 potential vendors providing demos and marketing materials, the exhibitors present on Saturday included: 

• Clear Ballot of Boston, MA
• Election Systems and Software of Omaha, NE (ESS is the only vendor currently certified by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania)
• Dominion Voting of Denver, CO (acquired the former Sequoia Voting System, who manufactured the equipment the County uses now)
• Unisyn Voting Solutions of Vista, CA
• Tenex Software Solutions of Tampa, FL

The other vendors are currently in the process of getting certified by the Commonwealth.

In the public comment/Q&A segment of the open house, a

number of speakers voiced what they hoped to see in the selected product and what they were concerned about. Jenifer Maslow, a Democrat and an inspector for more than 20 years at the LP polling place in district 1-2 (which votes at Arrowhead School) was primarily focused on the security of whatever system is chosen.

Maslow, who is also involved with the group Citizens for Better Elections, leaned toward vendor Clear Ballot, arguably the least-technological option, consisting of voters hand-marking a paper ballot by filling in circles for their preferred options, and that paper ballot then being fed into a machine for recording and tabulation.  She said she preferred Clear Ballot because she felt that “anything can be hacked, we don’t really know who owns these companies or who designs the software” and, with regard to Clear Ballot’s paper ballot, that “it’s not a foreign concept, this is how SATs are done” so it should be acceptable. “A voter would know their vote is as they intended", she said.

Maslow also noted that many times one of the machines in a poll breaks down and then creates a backlog of voters. In the more manual system, a voter would still be able to vote. She would also like to see a system that can ‘last for a long time’, since ‘we [the taxpayers] are not only voting on them but paying for them”.

Republican committeewoman Brenda Hackett, whose polling place is located within the Shannondell retirement community, offered her perspective – and arrived at the same preference as her Democrat counterpart.  “We have unique issues here at Shannondell with so many people unable to learn new things and some afraid of computers.  I think a fully touch screen system would keep voters away or create very long lines.  This problem will dissipate in the future as people unfamiliar with computers will have passed on.  However, there may be some people who never have to deal with computers…and introducing a touch screen system will be unfamiliar to many of them”.

Hackett continued, “I had a good feeling about the security and accuracy of the machine where a voter marks a piece of paper or where they vote on the touch screen and a piece of blank paper that they insert is returned to them filled in with their vote.  They then feed it in to the machine. So, I guess the one I like best is Clear Ballot.  When you are verified by the clerk, you are given a ballot which you write on in a private setting and then insert it into the machine.  It is in the control of the voter, and it gives the paper backup, and most people would easily learn how to do it."

And "I did not like the system that produces the paper ballot behind a window that they can't touch.  It may be hard to read. Since the issue with our machines is that there is no paper trail… [and since part of the new state requirements are that there must be a paper trail that can be reconciled/audited]… I liked the concept of a voter handling the paper themselves."  

From MY own perspective, I certainly agree with their comments, but I also liked that vendor Dominion re-uses a lot of the technology the County has already paid for in their Sequoia systems – which the County says they believe are reliable and safe - so they may have an edge in that their product can potentially been integrated more easily, quickly and for less money. In this system, voters are issued a card at check-in which is then loaded and activated with their voter information (party, district and relevant voting options) and then taken by the voter to the voting machine and handed to the machine operator for insertion, voting and recording. The card is then given back, wiped clean and reused.

Arkoosh said that money has been budgeted for this purpose over the past few years, but the County wanted to make sure the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had finalized their voting machine requirements before going out to bid.

If you want to provide general feedback on what features you’d like to see, reach out to the County at www.montcopa.org/vmfeedback and let them know your thoughts. They plan to post pictures and descriptions of the potential replacement machines on their Voter Services website shortly.

Poll Position

I generally don’t weigh in on Montgomery County issues. There are other bloggers who have more interest and do a far better job of covering the commissioners and row offices than I ever could. However, lately one county office in particular has been a burr under my saddle and since it involves Lower Providence, I feel compelled to write about it.

That office would be the Board of Elections/Voter Services. I’m not talking about the staff there; they do an exemplary job daily, often during extremely stressful circumstances. They've always been exceptionally helpful. No, I’m talking about Joe Passarella, the department director.

Last year I started working on a proposal to relocate one of our polling places (photo, right), the LP Township Community Center on Hillside Avenue, which happens to be outside my home voting district (2-3) – the only one for Lower Providence that is located outside of where its voters actually live. Not only that, but the parking lot is extremely small for the number of people who vote there (many of whom drive large SUVs), and there’s one awkwardly-placed entrance which has almost no line of sight to the parking lot once you drive in. It’s poorly designed and tough to turn around once you’re in it in order to leave. And it’s often dangerous, especially if you’re a senior citizen and can’t sprint across the lot to get inside to vote.

I understand our polling place used to be within my district's boundaries years ago, but the business/building hosting it closed and there was no other practical place at the time, so it ws moved where it is today.

I’ve worked that poll on election day many times and seen a few near-misses. I’ve heard some of the residents who vote there complain about it. So, I figure, nobody else is being proactive and doing anything about it, so I will. There's no longer any reason it has to be there.

I do my homework. I call the BOE and ask them what has to happen to relocate a poll. They tell me. So I set about making those things happen. I line up a proposed new site (photo, above), the new Calvary Church (formerly Victory Church, 601 N. Park Avenue), inside the voting district. It's got great access and a huge parking lot with a number of reserved handicapped spaces. It even has a good sized lobby for voters to wait in if the weather is poor.

I make sure the tenant and landlord of that building are OK with it and have appropriate facilities to support voting there.

I talk to the area leaders of both parties, and both of them tell me that they think it’s a great idea and can support it (although I'm aware the Republican party area leader, Doug Hager, is part of the ‘other’ Republican faction here in Lower Providence and has interjected himself in my election campaign in the past, supporting my old-guard opponent - so who knows what his word is worth. I'd like to believe him, but I'm not naive, either). Speaking of my opponent, Kathie Eskie, she never once responded to my letter and phone calls to her on this subject, so my take on that is that she's working against it.  At any rate, I did what the county told me I needed to do.

Most importantly, I speak to the voters directly. I go knocking on doors with a petition, and ask our Republican voters what they think and with only one exception, they agree and sign. I spoke to 25% of our registered ‘supervoters’ which, statistically speaking, tells me that more than likely most of the rest of them support it too.

When I’m done with all of this, I contact the person I spoke to initially and provide all this information so they can check it out, and they do. And then….nothing.

I happened to be at the BOE on other business a few weeks later and ran into this individual, and asked what the status is. I’m told that they checked it out, but because ‘no one has complained’ that they’ve decided to leave it where it is. And, this person mentioned that an email had gone out (supposedly to me) about it. Well…that’s interesting, because I never got an email, a letter or a phone call from anyone at the County about this. Or from anyone else, for that matter.

I asked for a copy of this correspondence, but then I’m told that this person ‘just cleaned out their emails and deleted it’. I’m sure the County’s legal department would be thrilled about that (then again, given all their other legal issues, maybe they really ARE thrilled about that). Still, there must be a ‘Right to Know’ law or record retention violation there somewhere. But I digress.

This brings me to Mr. Passarella. I contact him, as my contact’s supervisor, to obtain a copy of this correspondence. I mean, I’m a reasonable person, if they have a good reason and made a good faith effort, I’m fine with that. But I also suspect that there was a miscommunication, and I wanted to get straight from him exactly what the criteria truly is for such things. If, in fact, it’s ‘complaints’, which is not what I was told initially, then I would think that ME complaining should be enough, not to mention, I don’t know if he knows that our voters signed a petition supporting it.

Additionally, a number of the petition signers brought something to my attention that I hadn't even considered initially - they felt this was an outstanding idea because it's 'green' - meaning a large number of our voters can actually walk to this new polling place instead of having to drive.

Well, I’ve written to Mr. Passarella, and I have called him several times. I’m still waiting. At this point, I want to know why the County apparently thinks it can trump the will of Lower Providence voters. And, why it apparently doesn't think we deserve even the courtesy of a response one way or the other, or the opportunity to discuss it. I think we all deserve an answer, don’t you?