The Senate State Government Committee held a hearing on March 26 focusing on SB 48, introduced by Sen. John Gordner (R-Columbia) to provide some procedure for decertification of voting equipment by the state. Specifically, SB 48 would require the Department of State, in circumstances where 50 percent of the counties are affected, to develop and submit to the General Assembly a justification and plan for decertification and for replacement of the equipment, including timelines, costs, and funding sources. In turn, the General Assembly would create a commission to review the plan, and to make findings and recommendations, including potential legislation, relative to it.

CCAP's Doug Hill participated on a panel with Snyder County commissioner and CCAP Elections Reform Committee co-chair Joe Kantz, Dauphin County commissioner Jeff Haste and Montgomery County commissioner Ken Lawrence, discussing the bill and the current status of county purchase of voting equipment. Each commissioner reiterated how seriously they take the responsibility for running Pennsylvania's elections, as did Dauphin County elections director Gerald Feaser and Mifflin County elections director Zane Swanger, who also testified at the hearing.

With regard to the Stein settlement that is compelling the replacement, Kantz noted that Snyder County already has equipment with a voter-verifiable paper trail, yet is still being compelled to replace that equipment. Haste shared that his county had anticipated purchasing new voting equipment at some point in the future, but anticipated this would be several years away as the county evaluated options, particularly for funding and for voters' preferences. However, the Stein settlement has upended those plans, and while appreciating that the Governor has proposed providing 50 percent of the estimated cost in state funding, there is considerable uncertainty as to what, if any, funding might yet be available. Montgomery County, on the other hand, has already purchased its new equipment, although Lawrence noted that the county had already been budgeting for the purchase for a number of years. The county intends to roll out its new equipment in the May 2019 primary, and has been engaging in significant public outreach to ensure voters are familiar with the new system.

Hill reiterated that while counties would have preferred the discretion to move forward on their own timelines, the settlement is legally binding and thus counties are working diligently to meet its deadlines. Critical to that effort is the need to work with the administration and General Assembly to maximize the level of state funding available for equipment replacement, and to compress the funding timeline, ideally to a single year, so that counties can limit the burden on local property taxpayers. In addition, Hill noted that this experience suggests there is some prudence in reviewing the decertification process and at least putting in statute some higher burden regarding justification for decertification of equipment, as SB 48 envisions, although how and what that burden should look like deserves careful consideration. He noted as well that while counties appreciate the sponsor's support for county discretion in this matter, counties are too far down the road in the equipment procurement process for the legislation's immediate effective date to cause a change in course now.

Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar and Deputy Secretary for Elections and Commissions Jonathan Marks also participated in the hearing, as did members of the University of Pittsburgh Blue Ribbon Commission. Copies of CCAP and county testimony can be found at www.pacounties.org by selecting Legislative Testimony under the Legislative Action Center.