Several electoral districts in Pennsylvania were forced to utilize paper ballots during the Nov. 7 election for the state's Superior Court judges following a "technical glitch" that impacted voting machines.
According to several reports, the ES&S ExpressVote XL machines mistakenly swapped the votes for Democrat Judge Jack Panella and Republican Judge Victor Stabile. A press release by the Northampton County Elections Office (NCEO) said whenever a voter selected a "Yes" or a "No" for one of the two candidates to be retained on the Superior Court, the selection would record a vote for the opposing candidate on both the paper ballot and the voting machine.
This essentially meant that voters who chose Panella actually picked Stabile, and those who opted for the GOP candidate actually picked his Democratic rival. The NCEO clarified in its press release that "the issue is limited to the retention of Superior Court judges and is only an issue when recording the votes for when a voter selected a 'yes' for one candidate and a 'no' for another candidate."
To make things worse, a programming error with the vote machines caused the names of the two judges to switch places on the verification slip. An ES&S spokesperson also noted that an employee mistakenly mislabeled Superior Court races when determining how they would print out on paper backups.
Northampton County Director of Administration Charles Dertinger said in a news conference on the same day that around 7 a.m., voters first noticed the problem. This led to multiple polling places resorting to emergency paper ballots, and poll workers taking the voting machines offline.
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Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure was "livid at the election folks and ES&S," but pointed out that County Judge Abe Kassis ordered that the machines be still used – provided that polling staff would inform voters about the problem before they voted. Voters were instructed to trust the screen rather than the printed slip. (Related: Arizona AG’s office demands answers from Maricopa County election officials after widespread voting problems on Election Day.)
Furthermore, Dertinger ensured the public that the machine-readable barcodes on the paper backups were intact, confirming that all votes could be properly counted if needed. McClure, though frustrated at the error, echoed the statement, describing it as relatively minor.
Voters question reliability of voting machines after glitches in separate elections
The glitch on the recent election day echoed a similar problem in 2019, when an incorrectly formatted ballot in a judicial race led election workers to revert to paper ballots. That same year, election security advocates filed a lawsuit challenging the Keystone States's certification of the system in court.
Rich Garella of Protect Our Vote Philly, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, voiced skepticism about the trustworthiness of the ExpressVoteXL machines after the glitch. "Every malfunctioning machine should be immediately pulled from service, and every voter should receive an emergency paper ballot," he said.
The lawsuit was settled in August with an agreement that mandated election officials to document and publicly report any issues with the voting machines.
However, several years after the first incident, another one occurred. Voters in Pennsylvania were frustrated even though the impact of the glitch on the election was minimal, considering the near-automatic retention of statewide judicial incumbents in Pennsylvania.
"It's a joke," said voter Sherri Hahn after casting her vote using a provisional ballot. "We don't even have faith in the electoral system, then this happens?"
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Watch this video discussing and analyzing several reports about how voting machines were compromised on election day in Pennsylvania.
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