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Luzerne County Manager C. David Pedri picked a different new voting system than the one selected by an outside committee, which means county council must choose without a unified recommendation from both.
Three paper-trail voting machine suppliers had submitted proposals: Dominion Voting Systems, Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and Hart InterCivic.
The committee recommended a system from ES&S, which is the vendor that supplied the current voting machines, Pedri said.
Pedri said he reviewed the vendor proposals and committee report and personally chose Dominion.
“I recommended Dominion due to the voter experience as well as the price point,” Pedri said, declining to elaborate.
Memorandums from both Pedri and the committee were forwarded to the solicitor’s office for review before they are sent to council, Pedri said. The memorandums will be publicly released in a redacted format because negotiations are still underway, he said.
County Chief Solicitor Romilda Crocamo said Monday she was working on the redaction with plans to release the memorandums as early as Tuesday.
To help council with its decision, Pedri said he set up a public demonstration with all three vendors in the courthouse rotunda at 5 p.m. Oct. 7.
Council Chairman Tim McGinley said he and his colleagues will discuss the new machines at its Oct. 7 work session, which follows a 6 p.m. voting meeting after the rotunda machine demonstration. Council likely will review all information presented at that point to determine if any additional data is needed before a future vote, he said.
The Pennsylvania Department of State told counties in April 2018 they have until the end of 2019 to select new voting systems with a paper record that can be verified by voters and kept in case tallies are questioned. The new systems must be in use by the April 2020 primary, the state said.
County officials estimated the new system would cost around $4 million, although the specific costs won’t be publicly known until more details about the submissions are released.
Pedri said he was informed the state is proceeding with plans to cover 60 percent of the cost. The federal government also pledged $327,000 toward the purchase.
In a proposed new borrowing package also before council, the administration requested $1.8 million for the county’s portion of the machine cost, which equates to a little over 40 percent of the total estimate.
Committee format
Pedri set up the nine-member voting machine selection committee made of citizens and employees in April to screen vendor responses and issue a recommendation. He stressed at the time that council has final say on the system selection and is not required to accept any recommendations.
Committee members completed evaluation forms of each system critiquing their function, ease of use, equipment and cost.
Pedri omitted then-election director Marisa Crispell from the committee, saying he didn’t want her involved with the selection in light of controversy over her trips valued at nearly $2,500 to Las Vegas, Nevada, and Omaha, Nebraska, funded by ES&S, which later received a $325,000 county electronic poll book contract.
Crispell had said her advisory involvement was cleared by Administrative Services Division Head David Parsnik and county assistant solicitor Michael Butera and that she stepped down from the advisory role in fall 2017 before the county sought proposals from electronic poll book suppliers in January 2018.
A selection committee recommendation also was rejected in 2006 when commissioners picked the ES&S iVotronic to replace the county’s 70-year-old lever machines.
Back then, a selection panel recommended a machine made by Danaher Industrial Controls that displayed the entire ballot at one time, instead of requiring voters to scroll through electronic pages. Commissioners said they chose the iVotronic because they wanted something more technologically advanced. The iVotronics were first used in the November 2006 general election.
Director vacancy
In another election matter, Pedri also said Monday he likely won’t hire a new election director until after the Nov. 5 general election.
“I think it will be difficult to throw someone in as director right before the election,” he said.
Re-advertising the position after the election also may yield additional applications from other county election directors who are interested but too busy at this time, he said.
Approximately nine applied for the vacancy by the Sept. 11 deadline, although it’s unclear how many met minimum qualifications.
Parsnik has been overseeing election matters since Crispell’s departure. Crispell had been paid $54,096, and the position was advertised at $55,000 to $65,000 annually.