The Crawford County Election Board voted 3-0 on Wednesday to have Wayne Township use paper ballots due to a programming problem when readying the township's ballot for the Nov. 7 election. Each of the 68 precincts' ballots are programmed individually, but the program also has to mesh correctly for tallying purposes.
"It didn't appear to copy the (software) program correctly," said John Amato, a Crawford County commissioner who serves as chairman of the Election Board. County Commissioners Chris Soff and Francis Weiderspahn Jr. serve as vice chairman and secretary/treasurer, respectively, of the Election Board.
Under Pennsylvania law, in sixth class counties like Crawford, the county's three commissioners serve as the local election board except if any commissioner is running for re-election. At that time, a substitute is appointed for that year.
Gina Chatfield, the county's chief clerk who also serves as the voting machine programmer, didn't feel comfortable using the Wayne Township ballot without checking with Election Systems & Software Inc., the vendor for the machines which are more than 10 years old, Amato said.
ES&S recommended either reprogramming all 68 precincts or switching to a paper ballot for Wayne Township, Amato said. Approximately 350 to 400 paper ballots will be printed.
The county Election Board voted to go with paper ballots since programming of precinct machines began in late August. With the Nov. 7 election now less than two weeks away, there wasn't enough time to reprogram all 68 precincts and test them prior to the election, Amato said.
"We would have to start from scratch and put us out of whack with some of the other deadlines we have to meet with the state," Amato said. "The machines are old and archaic."
Crawford County has used the ES&S electronic touch screen voting machines since 2006.
Soff added there is movement across Pennsylvania and in other states to switch back to a paper ballot system within the next few years.
©2017 The Meadville Tribune (Meadville, Pa.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
