Burns proposing standardized testing of voting machines in PA
Bill would require use of current ballot, allow public to observe process, posting of results on State Department website
Rep. Frank Burns April 15, 2025 | 11:43 AM
EBENSBURG, April 15 – Saying Cambria County’s Election Day fiasco that prevented ballots from being electronically tabulated should not be repeated anywhere in Pennsylvania, state Rep. Frank Burns has crafted legislation to require standardized testing of voting machine equipment beforehand – using the actual ballots printed for that specific upcoming election. Using those ballots is not currently a requirement for any pre-election testing.
The changes promoted by Burns, D-Cambria, also would allow observers from the public to witness the testing – and would require the Department of State, which oversees elections in the Commonwealth, to post the certifications of accuracy on its public website.
“Current state law gives county election officials too much discretion on how and when testing is performed on voting machines. We need to bring greater standardization to pre-election preparations to ensure machines will function on Election Day,” Burns said.
“My legislation will require county boards of election to complete Logic and Accuracy Testing for their electronic voting systems as soon as the ballots that will actually be used are available. These tests will ensure that machines present candidates and contests in the correct order – and that marked ballots are correctly read and tabulated.”
______________________________________________________________________
“We need to bring greater standardization to pre-election preparations to ensure machines will function on Election Day … My legislation is one way to put more teeth into the oversight role the Department of State plays in elections, making it more of a tiger than a kitten.” – State Rep. Frank Burns.
______________________________________________________________________
Burns acted after Cambria County, as part of the ongoing tug-of-war over his Right-to-Know Law effort to obtain information, recently unearthed and provided him a Certification of Logic and Accuracy Testing verifying that Cambria County completed pre-election logic and accuracy testing for all of its electronic voting system components on Sept. 23, 2024.
The document was discovered by Nicole Burkhardt, who was appointed as interim director of the county’s Bureau of Elections on Nov. 25, 2024, before being named director on Feb. 10, 2025.
According to an attestation from Burkhardt provided to Burns, “With the assistance of ES&S, the manufacturer of the voting machines used in the Nov. 5, 2024, election, my office discovered a document that, to the best of my knowledge, the former director of the Cambria County Bureau of Elections did not realize existed.”
Burns said even though the heading on the document was “COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, CERTIFICATION OF LOGIC AND ACCURACY TESTING,” and it showed that 125 scanners and ballot marking devices to be used on Election Day were tested, his research discovered that filing it with the Department of State or making it public are not current requirements.
“My legislation is one way to put more teeth into the oversight role the Department of State plays in elections, making it more of a tiger than a kitten,” Burns said. “The widespread failure in Cambria County on Nov. 5, when the entire voting system was paralyzed from something preventable, should never happen again in any county in Pennsylvania.
“The commonsense requirement I am proposing that will ensure our elections and voting go smoothly and that every Pennsylvanian’s vote is counted.”