Burns moves to standardize ballot testing

(The Center Square) – With primaries fast approaching, some legislators want to improve upon election mistakes made last November.

Rep. Frank Burns, D-Johnstown, has introduced a bill that would standardize the testing processes counties undertake before an election.

The move comes after a malfunction with Cambria County’s ballot counting system required some votes to be counted by hand because they weren’t printed in a way the tallying system could read. The issue forced the county to extend the voting deadline and count incompatible ballots by hand.

When Burns sought answers from Cambria’s Office of County Commissioners, his Right to Know requests were initially denied, in part because the matter was currently under noncriminal investigation by the Department of State, which oversees Pennsylvania’s elections.

According to Burns, Secretary of State Al Schmidt said his department “doesn’t have subpoena powers to do a thorough investigation and must rely on the honesty of county officials to provide details of what transpired.”

This leaves Burns, and voters, with little insight into the process and no recourse for mistakes made.

“Current state law gives county election officials too much discretion on how and when testing is performed on voting machines,” said Burns in support of his bill.

As it is, the local responsibility of conducting elections in Pennsylvania falls to each of the commonwealth’s 67 counties, a job which has thrust them into the spotlight following high-stakes elections. How they go about it is a largely individualized – and in cases like Cambria’s, little understood – process.

In March, however, Cambria County supplied a new document dated in September which indicated that all of the systems had been tested and were in working order ahead of the November election. That the document existed and testing had been done, Burns said, made the problem even more vexing.

“We need to bring greater standardization to pre-election preparations to ensure machines will function on Election Day,” said Burns.

His proposal would require representatives from all relevant political parties and the public to witness the testing of each type of ballot exactly as they’ll be issued to the public as early as possible. They would also bear witness to the sealing of the machines prior to their use. The bill would enable the Department of State to take action in the event a county fails to follow through.

“My legislation is one way to put more teeth into the oversight role the Department of State plays in elections, making it more of a tiger than a kitten,” Burns said. “The widespread failure in Cambria County on Nov. 5, when the entire voting system was paralyzed from something preventable, should never happen again in any county in Pennsylvania.

With the notable exceptions of what happened in Cambria County and disputes over what ballots could be counted in the recount of the U.S. Senate race in Bucks County, the state saw a fairly smooth 2024 election season.

To deter what happened in Bucks County from happening again, Republicans in the House put forward a December bill that would allow their chamber to remove “rogue” election officials through an impeachment process.

“Our counties take elections really seriously, and we’re very proud of the work we do,” said Lisa Schaefer, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, told The Center Square in November.

Schaefer’s biggest lament was that election officials remain unable to conduct pre-canvassing, which would allow them to tabulate early votes ahead of election day. Instead, counters work double time and split their focus to ensure both mail-in and in-person ballots are counted as quickly as possible.