HARRISBURG (AP) – A legal challenge in PA over the viability of a particular manufacturer’s voting system has ended in a new settlement that advocates say will boost accountability by requiring election officials to publicly report problems with voting machines. The advocates who sued say it’ll provide an account of which voting machines are working well and which ones are not. Gov. Josh Shapiro’s top election official says the settlement “will provide additional public transparency.” The original lawsuit, filed in 2019, grew out of complaints about the ExpressVote XL touchscreen system made by Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software, that had been bought by three jurisdictions in PA, including Philadelphia. Under the settlement’s requirement, counties must compile a record of all malfunctions reported to it that prevented or delayed voting, vote-counting or reporting results. Counties will have 60 days to give reports to the state. The state will have another 45 days to post them publicly. Reports are to include a description of each malfunction, who reported it, its effect on voting and whether and how it was resolved. The requirement takes effect with this November’s election.
