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  • Wed. Nov 6th, 2024

Special: Philadelphia’s new ballot machines under scrutiny in Tuesday’s elections

Special: Philadelphia’s new ballot machines under scrutiny in Tuesday’s elections

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When Pennsylvania holds primary elections on Tuesday, some election security supporters will be enjoying carefully to see if more than 2,000 brand-new voting machines gotten last year by Philadelphia and two other counties perform without glitches.

FILE PICTURE: A voter looks at the paper trail created by a new Election Systems & Software ExpressVote XL voting machine, an electronic voting system with a backup paper trail, throughout a practice presentation in Hanover Township, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 5,2019 REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Picture

Philadelphia and Northampton counties first used the new “ExpressVote XL” machines in last November’s regional elections and will release them again in the presidential nominating contests and local races on Tuesday. A third county, Cumberland, will utilize the makers for the very first time.

Their very first extensive use in 2019 in Pennsylvania was spoiled by miscounted vote tallies in Northampton, a politically divided county in eastern Pennsylvania. Some ExpressVote XL devices improperly taped choose a number of candidates in the November election, triggering the county to count backup paper receipts to identify the right winners, according to Maudeania Hornik, chair of the Northampton Election Commission.

The maker of the ExpressVote XL equipment said in a December press conference that a few of Northampton’s 320 makers “were configured poorly at our factory prior to delivery to Northampton County.” The producer told the county as many as 30%of the devices were impacted, Hornik said.

Problems with a minimum of 366 ExpressVote XL devices also arose in Philadelphia, according to public records solely gotten by Reuters. The city in 2015 replaced its old voting devices with a brand-new fleet of 3,750 ExpressVote XL makers. Reuters might not determine how many of those makers were deployed in the November 2019 election there.

Philadelphia is house to 20%of signed up Democrats in Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground state that might identify who wins the presidency in November.

Poll workers and specialists reported concerns with the new makers at more than 40%of polling areas in Philadelphia throughout last November’s election, according to the records examined by Reuters. Problems consisted of touchscreens that were hypersensitive or that froze; paper voting invoices getting jammed in the devices; and panels opening on some machines to expose the equipment’s electronic controls, the records reveal.

Katina Granger, a spokesperson for the ExpressVote XL’s maker, ES&S, stated the company was “wholly positive” in the machines, and that it was “simply unreliable” for anyone to indicate there were prevalent issues with the ExpressVote XL.

The machines deal with a big test on Tuesday. After Pennsylvania postponed its 2020 main originally set up for April due to COVID-19 pandemic fears, Philadelphia minimized its in-person polling websites to 190 areas, down from more than 800 that would generally be operating. Those sites are more concentrated in neighborhoods dominated by low-income and minority citizens, U.S. Census information reveal. Pennsylvania enables citizens to vote by mail for any reason, but just 20%of Philadelphia’s electorate asked for absentee tallies for the June 2 contest.

( For a graphic showing voting variation in Philadelphia, see: tmsnrt

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