McClure Apologizes For Election Day Disaster: "We Will Do Better"

In a news conference yesterday afternoon, Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure has apologized and accepted responsibility for some serious issues arising from the rollout of the Express Vote XL voting system used in Tuesday's election. He acknowledged that one of his many duties is to ensure public confidence in our voting system. "[W]e fell short of that mark," he admitted.

The problems started with judges up for retention with simple "Yes" or "No" votes along the right side of the ballot. Some of the machines were sensitive, especially with those questions. They issued court orders throughout the day, resulting in calls and text messages from the elections office to election judges, instructing election judges to inform voters that if they had any issues, they were to notify election workers. Constables even served election judges with a court order concerning these retention races.

In addition, turnout was 27.68%, which was unexpectedly high for a municipal race. In some districts with contested races, it was much higher. Voters would have to wait. In an instant gratification society, this means some people would start complaining. The scapegoat for this wait was not the turnout, but the new machines. These new machines do take longer to operate than a simple touchscreen. For most people, it takes only 30-60 seconds longer, but that was long enough to make people start blaming the machines. I have received some reports of paper jams and other problems, but can attest there were no such issues in my precinct or the one next to me. I did poll about 30 voters about their experience with the new machine. Some did have some minor complaints about the sensitivity, but all reported they were able to vote without incident. Most people dislike and distrust computers, but liked the paper back-up. "That's a lot better than the politicians doing their thing," said one.

Common pleas judges were worried about their retention races, but I was confident in the new system. This all came to a sudden end when the polls closed and I printed out reports for the two machines I was using. Both of my machines showed that Steve Salvesen, a long-time Hanover Township Supervisor who lives in my district and presumably voted for himself, received no votes. They also showed judicial candidate Abe Kassis had zero votes. I knew this had to be wrong.

On my way to the courthouse, I was wondering what the hell I had done wrong. Then I began receiving reports from other judges who were experiencing the same issue. Yesterday, Lamont McClure said it was a county-wide problem.

When we run reports, we also remove encrypted flash drives from the machines and return them to the courthouse. My assumption was that these flash drives would show the actual count. Yesterday, ES&S Exec VP Adam Carbullido said that the flash drives showed the same erroneous results as appeared on the printouts.

When Executive McClure was made aware that Democrat Abe Kassis was getting no votes in Easton's blue wards, he sought and obtained permission from the state to scan the paper ballots. That count continued throughout the night, in the presence of candidates and their attorneys. The tabulation was finished around 5:30 am.

"We cannot have any difficulties with this system," said McClure, who added he was very disappointed with ESandS, manufacturer of The Express Vote XL. But he blamed himself. "[T]his is one of my responsibilities," he said. "To the voters yesterday who had difficulty casting their ballots, I am sorry. We will do better. To the candidates, their families and supporters who were unnecessarily made anxious by this process, I am sorry."

A chastened Carbullido also apologized to Northampton County voters and officials, claiming his company is committed to ensuring it never occurs again. He has "a high degree of confidence" in the tabulation of the paper ballots. But amazingly, "we don't know the root cause of the issue."

"How can you have a high degree of confidence that the results are accurate when you don't know what the root cause of your problem is?" I asked. Carbullido responded the paper ballots tabulated accurately, and I am sure they did. But how does he know these individual paper ballots are actually what appeared on the screen? He later admitted the flash drives contained the same errors that led to the obviously erroneous printouts, so how can he or anyone be sure the paper ballots are actually what the voters cast?

Carbullido would later say that "logic and accuracy" testing was done before these machines were put in use. This is done to ensure software has been set up properly to accurately count the specific ballots for that election. Obviously, this testing was botched.

In addition to the failure to test this setup, elections officials also improperly excluded Morning Call reporter Riley Yates from the scanning of the paper ballots on Tuesday night. McClure apologized to Yates and said he might have made a different decision. He said at that time elections officials were dealing with a "three-alarm raging fire." But as Yates noted, there can be no public confidence in a vote that is counted behind closed doors.

The public is permitted to attend the canvassing of the vote.

At this point, it's unclear whether Republicans will challenge this and problems occurring in other counties. Legally, there is little chance of success because of a strong public interest in finality of elections and a legal presumption of validity. But even a losing effort would be politically beneficial to the GOP.

McClure has honorably blamed himself. So has Adam Carbullido. But there's one person who really is to blame for this entire mess and no one has mentioned him. It is Governor Tom Wolf who ordered all 67 counties to get new voting systems with a voter verifiable paper trail. It is Wolf who ordered they be in place by 2020. It is Wolf who vetoed a bill to reimburse the county for 60% of the cost. It is Wolf who suddenly did an about face and agreed to that bill, but only after most counties dug into their pockets to buy $3 million systems to replace others with a few years of life still left in them.

Updated  9:43 am: Philly had sensitivity issues with ExpressVote XL. - At yesterday's news conference, ESandS Exec VP Adam Carbullido said he had heard of no complaints about the ExpressVote XL from other counties. WHYY is reporting, however, that there were problems in Philadelphia:

The complaints varied on the controversial machines. Across the city, some complained about the touch screen’s sensitivity, in which it changed their selections, while others found the font of the printed ballot too small to read. Some glitches put machines out of commission for a few hours.

Emma Tramble from West Philadelphia said the booth was so dark that she could hardly see the candidates she was selecting.

She added that people at her polling place had to wait a long time to vote, which she attributes to a combination of people getting used to the new machines and others not being familiar with the election itself.