Jul 22, 2022 6 min read

Thwarted in their yearlong effort to audit the 2020 general election, a group of Washington County residents is now pushing for a ballot referendum to stop using electronic voting machines in future elections.

Register of Wills James Roman approached the county commissioners during their Wednesday morning agenda meeting and then spoke publicly in support of the initiative at Thursday’s voting meeting.

He and Monongahela resident Ashley Duff presented a petition during the meeting that they said has more than 2,100 signatures from registered voters in the county pushing for a ballot referendum in November asking voters to decide whether or not to continue using voting machines.

Roman said the petition shows enough voters in the county want to stop using the ES&S computerized voting machines and asked the commissioners to pass a resolution supporting a referendum question in the upcoming election asking if they should be decommissioned.

“Allow the people of Washington County to have the ultimate say, not just three people up here. … They’re going to say these petitions are illegal,” Roman said of how he predicted the commissioners would respond to the request. “This is not meant as a legal move. This is meant as a compromise.”

“This is public outcry that we want it on the ballot,” Duff added while holding stacks of petition papers.

Several other people, who have been regular speakers at the meeting asking the commissioners to audit the 2020 election, also offered their support for the ballot referendum.

But county and elections officials countered that the group is citing the wrong section of the state Election Code and that the petition itself is flawed and cannot be considered, even if it garnered enough signatures. The group’s petition cites Article 11 in the Election Code regulating voting machines, but Board of Commissioners Chairwoman Diana Irey Vaughan said the county falls under Article 11-A that deals with electronic voting machines. She said the only mechanism for the referendum to be placed on the ballot is through a signature petition.

“The law under Article 11-A does not allow for the board of commissioners to arbitrarily pass a resolution to place a referendum on the ballot,” Irey Vaughan said before Thursday’s meeting. “It does not allow for us to do that.”

While Article 11 does allow for the commissioners to do just that, language in 11-A states a county can only change the electronic voting machines through a petition and referendum vote. For the question to be placed on ballot, the petition needs support from at least 10% of the total number of the electorate from the previous general election, meaning the petitioners would need at least 5,193 signatures from registered voters.

The terminology must also say, “Shall the use of an electronic voting system be continued in the county of Washington?” A sample petition produced by Roman uses different terminology and omits the word “electronic voting system” from the question. The petition also does not include a date for each signature or municipality of the signer, among other issues. Even if it were to receive the required amount of signatures by the Sept. 8 deadline, the petition would likely be challenged by opponents and could end in a legal battle in court.

The referendum asking county voters whether to implement an electronic voting system in the first place was overwhelmingly approved Nov. 4, 1980, according to a hand-written ledger stored at the elections office. The state Legislature passed the addendum in July 1980 allowing for such a referendum moving to electronic voting machines. A year after Washington County voters approved the referendum, the elections office implemented punch card voting, which fell under the law because of the automated mechanism in which the ballots were counted.

“Because the machine used to read the punch cards was electronic, it was considered an electronic voting system,” Irey Vaughan said.

Bob Sabot, who serves as a North Franklin Township supervisor, scoffed at the effort to move to paper ballots during public comment, calling it “nonsensical” as he asked the commissioners to focus on other issues.

“The past is the past, the future is the future, and we need to move forward. Paper ballots from the 1950s and ’60s is gone and not coming back,” Sabot said. “It’s just a waste of time. A waste of your time and a waste of my time.”

After the meeting, Commissioner Nick Sherman took exception with accusations that he hasn’t helped residents understand the referendum process. He said he met with many of the people pushing the ballot referendum this summer and told them they “weren’t executing it properly” while explaining they had to make changes to the petition for it to be legally binding and accepted by the elections office. He reiterated Irey Vaughan’s assertion that the state elections code does not allow the commissioners to make that decision.

“They have all the resources for the county and I’ve offered them to them,” Sherman said about explaining that the elections office will help people understand petition drives, but no one in the group went there to ask questions to ensure it was done correctly.

“I feel badly that they’ve listened to the advice of other people who have obviously misled them to lead them down a path that isn’t their goal,” Sherman added without elaborating on who he thought was leading the process.

Even if the effort was successful in removing the ES&S voting machines, which the county purchased for $2.8 million in 2019, it’s unclear what would be used to replace them. Paper ballots have been the preferred alternative brought up by many in the group over the past year, but that would not necessarily be an option for people with disabilities. Each precinct would need a handicap-accessible voting machine to allow people with disabilities to vote independently, according to the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002.

Roman, who said after the meeting that he did not consider himself to be the leader of the initiative, was non-committal over whether they would attempt another petition drive or continue to push the commissioners to support the ballot referendum.

“We’ll see,” he said.