Luzerne County reviewing proposals from four voting system vendors

Four vendors responded to Luzerne County’s recent request for proposals to provide a new voting system, records show.

County Manager Romilda Crocamo has said the solicitation will yield options on systems and pricing in case county council wants to make a switch for 2026.

Reconsideration of the voting system is appropriate at this time because the five-year maintenance and support contract with current voting equipment supplier Dominion Voting Systems expires at the end of 2025, Crocamo has said.

Another option for council would be negotiating a new maintenance and support contract to continue using the Dominion system for a set number of years.

The companies that submitted proposals before the Feb. 21 deadline: Dominion, Clear Ballot Group Inc., Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and Hart InterCivic.

County Election Director Emily Cook said Tuesday that analysis of the submissions is necessary to compare prices because the proposals differed in what equipment and support were included in purchase and lease options.

Generally speaking, the county would have to spend approximately several million dollars to purchase a system and under a million dollars annually to lease one.

Because there’s no mandate to change systems, there may be little or no state and federal funding to offset costs. The purchase of a voting system is not eligible for funding through the county’s annual state election integrity grant, officials said.

“We won’t have any type of real concrete recommendation until the summer because we need time to perform due diligence while also running the current election,” Cook said.

The administration will work closely with the county’s five-citizen election board on formulating a recommendation to council, Crocamo said Tuesday.

She said a public demonstration of the options will also be held before a recommendation is made to council.

Cook said a demonstration won’t be held until June or later due to the upcoming May 20 primary.

Depending on prices, the leasing option is worth considering because the county won’t be locked in if it decides to switch vendors, Cook said.

Council had approved the purchase of Dominion’s system for $3.6 million at the end of 2019 as part of a state mandate for all counties to implement systems with a paper record that can be verified by voters and kept in case tallies are questioned.

There are two ways to meet the paper-trail requirement — filling in ovals on actual paper or making selections on a computerized touchscreen ballot marking device and then printing a copy for review before feeding it into a tabulator to be cast and saved. The current Dominion system uses ballot marking devices, but the county has used paper ballots at times that were then scanned into the Dominion tabulators to be counted.

Cook said Tuesday there are many considerations in the debate over paper ballots versus marking devices.

Some voters prefer to mark their selections on paper and scan that in, as opposed to a printout, she said.

With paper ballots, the county would only need one ballot marking device at each of the 186 precincts for those with disabilities in addition to scanners to tabulate the ballots, she said.

Advocates of ballot marking devices say the machines immediately alert voters when they attempt to pick too many candidates (overvoting) or when they have not selected all allowable choices (undervoting) in case they want to choose more.

Ballot marking devices also require voters to type in write-in selections so handwriting does not have to be deciphered during post-election adjudication.

However, Cook noted the county already must deal with these issues for mail ballots.

The county experimented with using paper ballots in the 2023 primary election, but the county election board unanimously voted in August 2023 in support of the bureau’s plan to return to the ballot marking devices for that year’s general election. Officials concluded that electronic devices were preferred.

“There are all different factors at play in terms of figuring out what is the best long-term solution for the county,” Cook said. “There are a lot of sides to this coin.”

Cook said both options have merit.

“I think both solutions are good solutions. There’s nothing wrong with the system or method of voting we currently have. I think it’s dependent on the big-picture options,” she said.