WASHINGTON (Reuters)-When Pennsylvania holds the primary election on Tuesday, some election security advocates will pay close attention to whether the more than 2,000 new voting machines purchased last year in Philadelphia and two other counties are functioning properly.
Philadelphia and Northampton counties used the new "ExpressVote XL" machines for the first time in local elections in November last year, and will deploy them again in Tuesday's presidential nomination and local elections. Cumberland, the third county, will use these machines for the first time.
They were first widely used in Pennsylvania in 2019, but were damaged by a vote count error in the politically divided Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania. Maudeania Hornik, chairman of the Northampton Election Commission, stated that some ExpressVote XL machines incorrectly recorded the votes of several candidates in the November election, prompting the county to calculate alternate paper receipts to determine the correct winner.
The manufacturer of the ExpressVote XL equipment stated at a press conference in December that some of Northampton’s 320 machines were “improperly configured in our factory before being delivered to Northampton County.” Hornik said the manufacturer told the county. Up to 30% of machines are affected.
According to public records obtained exclusively by Reuters, Philadelphia also had problems with at least 366 ExpressVote XL machines. The city replaced its old voting equipment with a new fleet of 3,750 ExpressVote XL machines last year. Reuters was unable to determine how many machines were deployed in the November 2019 elections.
Philadelphia has 20% of Pennsylvania's registered Democrats, a crucial battlefield state that can determine who wins the presidency in November.
According to records reviewed by Reuters, during the election in November last year, polling workers and technicians reported problems with the new machine in more than 40% of the polling stations in Philadelphia. Problems include touch screens that are too sensitive or crashed; paper voting receipts are stuck in the machine; records show that the panels on some machines are opened to expose the electronic controls of the device.
Katina Granger, a spokesperson for ExpressVote XL manufacturer ES&S, said the company is "completely confident" in these machines. Anyone suggesting that ExpressVote XL has general problems is "completely inaccurate."
These machines face a major test on Tuesday. Due to fears of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pennsylvania has postponed the 2020 primary elections originally scheduled for April, and Philadelphia has reduced its on-site polling stations from more than 800 locations that they normally operate to 190. US Census data show that these locations are more concentrated in communities dominated by low-income and minority voters. Pennsylvania allows residents to vote by mail for any reason, but only 20% of Philadelphia voters asked for absentee ballots in the June 2 election.
(For a chart showing the difference in Philadelphia voting, see: tmsnrt.rs/2XOmdoS)
Philadelphia, Northampton and Cumberland in central Pennsylvania have yet to announce whether these machines will also be used in the November presidential campaign between Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden. Counties generally avoid switching their voting systems during the main election year.
Reuters reviewed the records of 605 calls made by Philadelphia pollsters to report problems with the ExpressVote XL machine to the city’s election day technical helpline in November last year. Reuters also interviewed 13 poll workers and voters who said they had experienced some of these problems firsthand.
Reuters received copies of call records from four Philadelphia voters-known as "trouble cards," two of whom were plaintiffs in the lawsuit, demanding that Pennsylvania stop using these machines. The case was brought by two non-partisan election integrity groups and several voters, and is currently being heard in Pennsylvania courts.
Philadelphia Deputy Commissioner Nick Custodio provided these records to voters under a law that allows voters in Pennsylvania to view and copy such information.
When asked for comments about the malfunctioning card, Custodio said that in November 2019, there were fewer and fewer calls about ExpressVote XL machines compared to calls about previous machines in the city in past elections. Custodio did not specify the number of failed cards, nor did it provide a comparable total number of failed cards in previous elections.
In an email to Reuters, he called the city’s experience with the new voting device “very positive” and stated that the news organization had “biased (sic) facts by obtaining copies of some records from two voters. collect". Plaintiff in state litigation. Reuters requested these records under Pennsylvania's right to information law. Philadelphia’s associate attorney rejected this request on the grounds that a state law stipulates that “any qualified voter in the county can inspect and copy records,” that is, voters in Pennsylvania. Reuters then asked some voters to copy and share with news organizations, and four of them did so.
Matthew Lilly, the president of a company that served Philadelphia’s old voting machines, was replaced by ExpressVote XL. He disputed Custodio’s statement that the previous elections had generated more machine problems. Lily said that in the 20 years he worked for the city, he did not remember any elections that resulted in more than 500 troublesome cards.
Reuters was unable to independently confirm how many malfunctioning cards the Philadelphia voting machine usually produced in previous elections.
ES&S spokesperson Granger said that since November, Pennsylvania machines “have developed additional quality controls and training.”
ES&S, headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is one of the largest manufacturers of election machines in the United States. The company released ExpressVote XL in 2018. This machine is the successor to its earlier ExpressVote model, which has been used in 1,838 counties across the country.
When voting on the ExpressVote XL machine, voters insert a blank page into the machine and make a choice by tapping on the interactive screen. The machine then prints a receipt for voters to view, and their choices are listed in human-readable text with a barcode representing each candidate they choose. The machine uses barcodes to tabulate the results.
Even before November of last year, some election security experts in Pennsylvania expressed concern that ExpressVote XL machines are vulnerable to vote tampering, partly because voters cannot know whether these barcodes accurately reflect the candidates they voted for. In addition to the state lawsuit, another group of voter advocates filed a federal lawsuit to prevent Pennsylvania from using these machines for similar problems.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed the lawsuit in April, saying that the plaintiff did not prove that the machines recorded votes incorrectly or were vulnerable to hacker attacks.
Marian Schneider, who served as Pennsylvania's undersecretary of elections and administrative affairs from February 2015 to May 2017, said that any new voting system may be introduced with "hiccups."
“But the number of problem cards recorded in an election year (2019) with low turnout is worrying,” said Schneider, who is currently the president of Verified Voting, an advocacy organization for safe voting technology. Schneider is not involved in litigation involving ExpressVote XL machines.
West Philadelphia voter Susie Mizelle told Reuters that she was shocked when she saw the top panel of the ExpressVote XL open in November last year, which contained a USB drive and a power button. Mizelle, 44, asked Thelma Peake, the captain of the constituency, why voters could access the internal system of the machine. According to two women, Pique told her that the panel on the machine had been "popping off".
Pique said she eventually closed the panel, but it was still "easy to tamper with."
According to ES&S, ExpressVote XL machines only accept "certified and approved USB flash drives containing encrypted data", which makes it impossible for other devices to "change election definitions or system firmware."
Of the six counties in New Jersey and Delaware, three counties also use ExpressVote XL machines and said they have not encountered any problems. So far, they have used 700 machines in total.
Nicole DiRado, administrator of the Union County Election Commission in New Jersey, said: "There is no problem with tabulating ballots or how voters mark ballots. So far, the company has deployed 432 machines in local elections. ."
The other three counties did not respond to requests for comment.
The Philadelphia Election Commission stated that in the election on Tuesday, Philadelphia will deploy at least 1,703 ExpressVote XL machines.
Pennsylvania State Representative Chris Raab said that Philadelphia residents who came to vote in person on June 2 may “become older, darker, and poorer.” He is also the head of the Democratic Committee of the Ninth District of Philadelphia.
Raab asked Pennsylvania last year to investigate concerns about the unsafety of ExpressVote XL machines. He said he was “deeply concerned” that these voters will have to crowd in fewer polling stations and use the machines on Tuesday.
315 machines will be deployed in Northampton County. It is one of the most competitive counties in the US presidential battlefield states, and these places will play a huge role in November. Cumberland County will operate 384 ExpressVote XL machines.
These three counties have 17% of the state's registered voters and nearly a quarter of the registered Democrats. In 2016, Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania by less than a percentage point. This slight victory helped him get to the White House.
More than a third of the 605 failed cards in the Philadelphia 2019 general election showed that the ExpressVote XL machine was unavailable for a period of time during the voting period.
The most frequently reported problem-mentioned in the 117 cards-is a screen problem, such as the screen is too sensitive or not sensitive enough. Two dozen reported security issues, such as a panel popping up to show the machine's software installation area.
One-fifth of the faulty cards reviewed by Reuters indicated that the city's helpline did not resolve the issue that caused the call.
Custodio said in an email that these machines were tested to ensure accuracy before the 2019 election, and that "the vast majority" of problems were resolved over the phone.
In November last year, Amanda Feifer, who oversaw the staffing and logistics of election day in an electoral district in southern Philadelphia, mentioned the problem of touch screens and did not highlight the options chosen by voters. She said voters spend longer than usual voting hours, causing some voters to line up long.
"No one can tell me a story that convinces me that (the machine) is okay, because I have witnessed it with my own eyes," Feaver said.
Castordio said that according to a post-election survey conducted by the city, more than 86% of election judges (officials who oversee polling stations) reported that they waited less than 20 minutes at the polling station. He did not share the investigation with Reuters.
Hornik, chairman of the Northampton Election Commission, said that when the county purchased ExpressVote XL machines for $2.88 million in 2019, she was the “first supporter”.
Last year's experience in her county made her worry about potential, possibly undetectable errors that could affect the results. However, Hornik said the county has not allocated funds to invest in the new voting system, "so we have to give them another chance."
Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan; editing by Soyoung Kim and Marla Dickerson
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