Action on voting machines is misguided

Gov. Wolf’s new spin on voting machines is driven by good intentions, but move is a poor way to get it done.

Gov. Tom Wolf’s new spin on his bond regarding Pennsylvania’s voting machines is driven by good intentions but a poor way to get it done.

Wolf included $15 million in his budget proposal for counties to carry out a Department of State mandate that all voting machines in the state have a voter-verifiable paper ballot or paper record of votes cast.

The Republican-controlled General Assembly left the money out of the budget it passed in June. It followed up with legislation that included $90 million for counties for voting machines.

The bill’s added policy changes — including the elimination of single-action straight-party voting — led the governor to veto it.

The regular process from there would have been to negotiate a compromise between our Democratic governor and Republican Legislature. Wolf, unfortunately, chose a third option: Floating $90 million in bonds without the General Assembly’s approval.

To call the governor’s defense of this move’s constitutionality strained would be to give too much credit.

It relies, according to a PennLive report, on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s definition of elections systems as “critical infrastructure.”

From there, it’s a dive into the fine print of Pennsylvania’s Economic Development Financing Law. The 1967 law delegates bonding power to the executive branch for economic development at the state and local levels.

Even granting half the Wolf administration’s strained logic — that voting machines are critical infrastructure under the terms of state law because a federal agency categorizes them as such — fails the smell test. An exception for economic development simply does not cover voting machines.

Again, the governor’s motive is a good one. His call for verifiable election results is sensible in an age when reports of Russian hacking and President Donald Trump’s unverified complaints of voter fraud might put doubts in voters’ minds about the integrity of their ballots.

Many Pennsylvania counties, including Montgomery and Berks, lacked paper records by which results could be verified.

And those counties responded to the mandate with responsible action — in Berks’ case, the commissioners moved in February to spend $4.5 million to replace the county’s 30-year-old voting machines.

The Berks County Elections Office is to be commended for testing them at some polling places in the primary and rolling them out for a full run in November so any glitches can be caught and corrected ahead of the 2020 elections.

The $90 million Wolf and state lawmakers seem to agree is the appropriate amount to reimburse counties would cover 60% of the cost across all 67 of them.

“I think it’s important to show good faith and that’s what I’m doing here,” the governor said of his decision to float bonds for voting machines.

Wolf should show good faith by his oath of office and discharge the duties of his office with “fidelity to the constitution of this commonwealth.”

The governor should seek the funds he promised counties but the fact that the Legislature did not feel beholden to a pledge he made without securing it from that body first does not excuse finding a way around the state constitution.

Securing $90 million for voting machines is not an emergency. Wolf and legislative leaders should come to a compromise and deliver the money without ill-gotten red ink.

Even granting half Wolf ’s strained logic — that voting machines are critical under the terms of state law because a federal agency categorizes them as such — fails the smell test.