Pennsylvania: Electoral distrust grows due to voting machine errors

Pennsylvania is struggling to regain voter confidence in the election system, specifically in Northampton County, whose 2023 election was once again mired by voting system issues. Local officials are worried that they will present problems again in the 2024 presidential election, given the post-2020 rhetoric.

Northampton County, which happens to be purple since it voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and then Joe Biden In 2020, has voting machines from Election Systems & Software, which failed in 2019 in a judges' election and did so again in 2023, further increasing distrust among locals.

"We’re at the peak of mistrust of one another, but until that subsides, counties like ours need to be nearly perfect, and I think this system allows us to do that," County Executive Lamont McClure told POLITICO.

Northampton's 220,000 registered voters make the county very interesting for both parties, which is why some officials lamented the electoral situation. "The broader concern is that an incident like this would be misused to undermine confidence in our electoral process," Secretary of State Al Schmidt said, also speaking to POLITICO.

The failures of 2019 and 2023

The year before the pandemic marked the county's first use of touch-screen electronic voting machines, and it wasn't exactly the best debut. The machines undercounted the Democratic candidate's votes, and officials discovered days later that the votes on the devices did not match those that had been submitted digitally.

Although they claimed it was a human error, the recurrence in 2023 only worsened things. On that occasion, it reversed voters' preferences for an election of judges.

"Voters were asked to decide whether Pennsylvania Superior Court Judges Jack Panella and Victor Stabile should be retained for additional 10-year terms. The 'yes' or 'no' votes for each judge were switched on a summary displayed to voters before they cast their ballot, said Charles Dertinger, the Northampton County director of administration. If a voter marked 'yes' to retain Panella and 'no' on Stabile, for example, it was reflected as 'no' on Panella and 'yes' on Stabile," the AP reported.

The company regretted what happened but warned that the machines would reflect the voters' will. Linda Bennett, senior vice president of account management at ES&S, said in early November that the error only affected one part of the machine, so they managed to rectify the results.

Local leaders have already expressed concern about the upcoming elections, especially when convincing voters that their vote is protected. "Since 2019, the theory has been well, that was a big mistake, but we caught it and we've implemented new processes to make sure nothing like that would ever happen again. I don't know how we can restore trust with these machines," said Matthew Munsey, president of the Northampton County Democratic Party.