In April 2018, all Pennsylvania counties were informed by the Commonwealth that they must select new voting systems that provide a verifiable paper record, and that those new systems be in place no later than the 2020 primary.
The ClearBallot system, which uses hand-marked paper ballots, was selected by the elections board on November 27, and approved by the County Commissioners on December 4.
The decision came after many months of research and deliberations, which included three well-attended public demonstrations of the various machines under consideration. Those sessions exposed hundreds of polling place workers and voters to the ClearBallot machines, and the upcoming trainings will supplement that exposure.
Voter-Verified Paper Ballot System
ClearBallot is a voter-verified paper ballot system that uses ballots lacking bar codes or QR codes. Voters complete paper ballots by hand and feed them into a scanner, which drops the ballot into a ballot bag for transportation to the Board of Elections office at the end of Election Day.
ClearBallot scanners also scan an image of the completed ballots and tabulate results from each precinct for efficient Election Night reporting. All tabulated and scanned images are kept in a secured database and do not touch the Internet.
The ClearBallot system also provides a ballot-marking device for each polling place for voters who require ADA provisions. The ballot-marking device prints a ballot identical to those provided to non-ADA voters at the polling place before it is fed into a scanner.
