Analysis of voting system options likes paper for cost and security

Election security experts told the Allegheny County Board of Elections in June that the best choice for secure elections is a voting system where most voters make their selections with a pen on paper — while those who need them have access to ballot- marking devices.

A new analysis shows that for Pennsylvania counties that have already selected new systems, that is also the cheaper option.

The analysis, from Citizens for Better Elections and the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security, looks at voting systems selected by 31 Pennsylvania counties, as required by a post- 2016 election state lawsuit settlement.

The remaining 36 counties, including Allegheny County, had yet to make the decision by Aug. 5, when the analysis was done. A voting machine search committee, composed of county employees, is expected to make a recommendation to the Allegheny County Board of Elections by the end of the summer.

“Counties that selected exclusively ballot- marking device configurations are spending more than two times as much as counties selecting primarily hand-marked paper ballots,” said the University of Pittsburgh’s Chris Deluzio, one of the study’s authors and also one of the experts who appeared before the Board of Elections in June.

“Although the number of voters covered in ballot-marking device counties is around 40%, those counties are responsible for north of 60% of the total cost so far,” he said, referring to counties that have already made their selection.

That includes Philadelphia, which selected an expensive ballot- marking device system from ES& S, the nation’s largest vendor. After revelations Monday that the company did not disclose lobbying expenses and lobbyists’ campaign contributions to city officials, that contract may be revoked at an election board meeting Thursday.

“Philadelphia being the largest and having gone for an expensive ballot- marking device configuration does distort the analysis a little bit,” noted Mr. Deluzio.

ES& S is the most popular vendor among counties that have made a selection, and it offers both types of systems. It also supplies Allegheny County’s current voting machines and several of the systems under consideration.

Mr. Deluzio argued that hand- marked systems have multiple benefits. “Putting a computer between the voter and the ballot poses a number of problems. There’s an increase in the risk that a computer might fail or malfunction, or in the worst case be manipulated by hacking or otherwise.”

He also said studies have shown that when voters make a selection on a touch screen and then are given the chance to verify their selections, they typically do not verify, and if they do, they don’t notice errors. This is exacerbated if the selection is marked on paper in the form of a bar code.

“I would urge Allegheny County’s officials, and any county’s officials that haven’t made a decision, to take this pricing data and leverage that in negotiating with vendors,” Mr. Deluzio said.

“Both the cost and the security and verification challenges posed by ballot-marking devices weigh heavily in favor of hand-marked paper ballots.”