Tuesday’s primary election might be the last that use the touch-screen voting system that has been in place in Westmoreland County since 2005.
The county last week received proposals from four companies to sell new computerized machines that will allow for the generation of a verifiable paper trail to meet a mandate issued last year. Gov. Tom Wolf called for the implementation of new voting systems for the 2020 presidential election that enable officials to check that tallies registered by the computerized systems are accurate.
County officials this year borrowed nearly $44 million for a series of capital projects, including $8.2 million allocated for buying new voting machines.
Elections Bureau Director Beth Lechman said it will take about a month to analyze the proposals, which will then be presented to the county’s election board to review. The board, which includes retiring county Commissioner Charles Anderson along with county Judges Meagan Bilik-DeFazio and Christopher Feliciani, will then recommend to the board of commissioners a preferred voting system.
The county commissioners will make the final decision.
“I am in no rush to do it this fall if we are not 100% convinced on the quality of the machines and if there is a proper amount of time for the training of our staff and voters,” Commissioner Ted Kopas said.
Elections officials last summer hosted about a half-dozen demonstrations of new voting systems that included a mix of computer touch screens and paper ballots.
The system now in place tallies results from each voting machine and are downloaded to a central computer at the courthouse. The new system is expected to generate paper receipts or copies of cast ballots to enable additional checks on the results.
Results reporting improved
While voters will see no changes to how they cast ballots this spring, those watching returns on election night will be able to view more detailed results on the county’s website.
The county paid $13,000 for a new software package to track and make public election results. The election results page of the county’s website will automatically update throughout the night to include tallies as they are uploaded, Lechman said.
The results will include color-coded maps and real-time results for each race — a system identical to the way vote totals are reported in neighboring Allegheny County. Results can be sorted by individual races and allow for searches for separate precincts and candidates.
“It will provide the public in Westmoreland County with more information displayed in a more interactive way,” Lechman said. “The old reports were not always easy to navigate. It was all there, but it was harder to find.”
