Comment: The ES&S ExpressVote BMD Terminal used in Kentucky is a BMD (ballot marking device). “The easiest way to think about it is that the touchscreens are just an expensive ink pen,” Taylor Brown”. It’s reassuring that Kentucky is using this system and not the ES&S Expressvote XL that New York State Board of Elections certified last year.
The NYSBOE certified ES&S Expressvote XL does not print out a ballot. It shows a partial “receipt” under glass for the voter to check and prints a barcode on the receipt. Then it counts the vote as encoded in the barcode. There is an ongoing lawsuit by Common Cause against this machine because a voter can’t know that the barcode encodes their intent. We are also supporting VIVANY, a bill in Albany to preserve our current system of hand-marked paper ballots counted on scanners, like in Kentucky. It would rule out machines like the ES&S Expressvote XL
ALLEGRA DENGLER
What were those machines in the viral Kentucky voting video? And how do they work?
By John Cheves
Updated November 02, 2024 6:20 PM
The ES&S ExpressVote BMD Terminal is used in 23 Kentucky counties to let voters mark their paper ballots. Election Systems & Software
When a woman in Laurel County complained Thursday that she had a hard time registering her touchscreen selection for Republican Donald Trump for president — and her TikTok video of the incident went viral — many people asked why the county doesn’t use paper ballots.
But it does.
As ordered by the Kentucky legislature in 2021, Kentucky has made the transition to full use of paper ballots across all 120 counties.
In 23 counties, including Laurel — and the state’s most populous county, Jefferson — county clerks have purchased ES&S ExpressVote BMD Terminals, according to the Kentucky Board of Elections.
Voters insert paper ballots into these machines; mark the ballots by touching the screen where the appropriate names or answers appear; and take their marked ballots to a nearby optical scanner, where ballots are entered.
“The easiest way to think about it is that the touchscreens are just an expensive ink pen,” Taylor Brown, general counsel for the Kentucky Board of Elections, said in an interview Friday. “However, whether you use a touchscreen or a pen, there is always what we call a voter-verified paper trail that allows us to perform audits.”
The Laurel County woman who reported struggling to vote for Trump on Thursday might have erred by pushing the designated box in the corner or along the border, not in the middle of the box, the state Board of Elections said in a statement on Friday.
The woman told precinct officials she finally was able to record her vote for Trump, the board said. None of the other 1,700 people who participated in early voting in Laurel County on Thursday reported a similar problem using the touchscreen, the board said.
“The state Board of Elections encourages voters in counties using ExpressVote touchscreens to use their finger or a stylus to firmly make their chosen selections within the middle of the field allocated for that candidate or response.,” the board said.
“Further, the state Board of Elections recommends that all voters in the commonwealth who believe they are experiencing an issue preventing them from casting their ballot as desired first report their concerns to the election officials at their voting location and then call the attorney general’s election hotline at 1-800-328-VOTE.”
Still, video of the woman trying to push the box for Trump, with the device eventually selecting Democratic nominee Kamala Harris instead, was shared thousands of times on social media, including by popular right-wing accounts who claim without evidence that widespread election fraud was the cause of Trump’s 2020 election loss.
What other machines do Kentucky counties use?
Voters in 97 Kentucky counties insert hand-marked ballots into optical scanners made by Hart Intercivic, a rival of ES&S. If voters have accessibility needs and cannot easily use their hands, then a Hart Intercivic Verity Touchwriter or a Hart InterCivic Verity Duo can be provided in these counties.
Local boards of elections, including county clerks, decide which system they prefer.
In Fayette County, voters mark their ballots by hand.
Don Blevins Jr., who was Fayette County clerk for 13 years until he retired in January 2023, said voting trends change over time.
After “the fiasco of the 2000 presidential election,” when uncertainty in Floridaover the results of paper ballots led to a U.S. Supreme Court challenge and nationwide protests, Fayette County and other jurisdictions switched to electronic voting, Blevins said.
But around 2016, the pendulum swung the other way, Blevins said. Americans concerned about election security said they wanted a paper trail after they voted. So paper ballots have returned to Kentucky.
Neither of the two voting systems found in Kentucky is really better than the other, Blevins said.
Counties that use an electronic ballot-marking device, like Laurel, can save money because they don’t have to estimate how many ballots they need to print in advance, Blevins said. The device prints the ballot cards as needed. Not having pre-printed ballots lying around ahead of the election means counties don’t have to lock ballots in special bags for security purposes, as Fayette does, Blevins said.
On the other hand, the devices and their software can cost thousands of dollars, so a precinct might have only a couple of them, which means voters wait in lines to use them, Blevins said. Marking ballots by hand requires only a table with a security screen around it, and a precinct easily can fit a half-dozen of those, he said.
With either system, Kentucky voters should check their ballots before entering them into the scanner to ensure the marked choices accurately represent their desired selections, Blevins said. If there is an error, they’re entitled to ask precinct officials for a replacement ballot.
Ballots are safe once they’re submitted, Blevins added.
Voting equipment is tested for accuracy, secured and not connected to the internet, and after the election, vote results are audited by the secretary of state’s office and the attorney general’s office. Bipartisan teams of precinct officers from each community watch over every voting locations to make sure rules are followed, he said.
“It’s really impossible to cheat, and it would be just as hard to try and cheat and not get caught,” he said. “To cheat on an election would require the collusion of so many people at the precinct, at the county board of elections, even at the state level, to pull it off — and I think you know that once you have a conspiracy involving that many people, someone is gonna talk about it. It’s not going to stay a secret for long.”
This story was originally published November 2, 2024, 6:00 AM.