Are you ready for this?

An interesting new bill is mentioned in today’s Update of legislative activity from the Pennsylvania Legislature. First, some background.

You surely recall Public Act 77 enacted at the end of October 2019. The Act provided authorization for the State to issue bonds to help counties finance the acquisition of new voting machines which can produce paper audit trails of votes cast by people who vote in-person at their local polling places. By the end of 2019, all of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties met the Governor’s mandate to upgrade their voting apparatus to Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Capacity. Objections from opponents of the mandate were satisfactorily resolved by the legislation and by court decision.

More significantly, that Act also provided for a number of election law reforms which are now in place — including a provision that allows voters to have access to absentee ballots without having to explain or state a reason, and a provision that allows voters to have access to mail-in ballots if they prefer not to go to their local polling place to cast a ballot in-person.

At the beginning of April, 2020, a couple of bills (noted in a previous post) were introduced to modify those provisions by requiring the State to send out applications for ballots, without troubling voters with the task of requesting applications for the ballots. Not only were those bills a bit confusing, but the Governor expressed opposition to the proposals, because of the potential risk of fraud that might arise. Besides, the State had already made an effort to simplify the process of requesting an application for ballots, by allowing voters to make their requests, not only in person or by mail, but also online.

The voters have responded favorably to that simplified process. Some counties have reported being overwhelmed with requests for mail-in ballots. Understandably, some of that voter response is due to concern about the current coronavirus pandemic and a desire to avoid having to go to the polls.

Now comes Senate Bill 1129, introduced yesterday by Senator Fontana (D-Allegheny County) and co-sponsored by at least 10 additional Senators. This bill proposes that in all elections after 2020 all voting be accomplished by mail-in ballots. The system has been used successfully in Oregon for a number of years and is now effective in Washington, Utah, Colorado, and Hawaii. However, it may be worth noting that opposition to mail-in voting has been expressed by some members of the GOP. Yesterday, the Pennsylvania version of the bill was referred to the Senate Committee on State Government for consideration.

Anyone in the market for used voting machines?