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December 30, 2019
Dear Vote Protectors,
Almost exactly a year ago, POVPhilly formed when several individuals and grassroots organizations came together in response to Philadelphia’s voting machine selection process. We started with great hope that Philadelphia’s City Commissioners would listen to security experts, voters, and taxpayers and select a cost-effective and secure voting system.
To our surprise, the Commissioners were not interested. Instead, they selected the most expensive, least secure system available. However, POVPhilly has kept working towards our goal, even as Philadelphia’s key players have steadfastly stood by their bad decisions.
Although we don’t yet have hand-marked paper ballots in Philly, we have achieved a lot over the past year. Our fight has helped bring hand-marked paper ballots to critical swing counties in Pennsylvania and it has shed light on processes and practices the city has preferred to keep hidden. Just before Christmas, Pa. Senator Larry Farnese wrote to Governor Wolf and said, "now is the time to require all counties to review their voting machine selections." About the same time, Pa. Representatives Stephen Kinsey, Jason Dawkins and Chris Rabb sent a joint letter asking Secretary of State Boockvar to investigate the ExpressVote XL.
We achieved this by working together. You came out to hearings, attended rallies, visited legislators, made phone calls, sent letters, tweeted, posted on Facebook, and educated friends, family, and neighbors about this important topic. Thank you for joining this effort!
For POVPhilly, 2019 ends with renewed hope. Pennsylvania faces two separate court challenges to Philadelphia’s current voting system and public support for hand-marked paper ballots keeps growing.
We’ll look back at a year of Protecting the Vote in Philadelphia. But first, a couple of actions you can take right now:
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ACTIONS FOR THIS UPDATE
- Commit to write a letter-to-the-editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer with your thoughts on Philadelphia’s voting machines.
We are coordinating a letter to the editor campaign for early 2020. Email povphilly@gmail.com if you plan to write a letter or want more information about the process. Writing a letter is neither hard nor time consuming. The best letters are short, based upon your own experiences or knowledge, and written from the heart. If you have questions, please email us!
- Thank Senator Larry Farnese and Representatives Stephen Kinsey, Jason Dawkins and Chris Rabb for speaking out on election integrity.
Senator Farnese: 215-952-3121 / email via web / message on Facebook
Rep. Kinsey: 215 849-6592 / email via web / message on Facebook
Rep. Dawkins: 215 744-7901 / email via web / message on Facebook
Rep. Rabb: 215 242-7300 / email via web / message on Facebook
- Want to do more? See our Take Action page.
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“The commissioners will be holding two public comment sessions regarding new voting technology. The first session is Thursday, January 10, 2019 at 6:00pm; the second session is Saturday, January 12, 2019 at 9:30am. Both meetings will be held at our Spring Garden office, at 520 N. Columbus Boulevard, in the 6th floor public hearing courtroom.”
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January 10 & 12: Despite the short notice, about 60 people attend one or both of the public sessions. Almost every single speaker asks the city to select hand-marked paper ballots.
At the meetings, the commissioners share what they asked for on their already-submitted RFP (request for proposal) or bid letters to vendors. Their focus is not on hand-marked paper ballots, but on a full-faced system that can fit all candidates on one screen and something that looks like the machines we used for the last 20 years. We immediately suspect that the fix is in for the one machine that comes closest to that: the ES&S ExpressVote XL.
The public had no opportunity to try out voting systems or even make comments about what should be in the RFP.
February 2019
February 11: After meeting with a representative of POVPhilly, Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale holds a press conference where he says it appears that the city’s request for proposals “was written in favor of one vendor.” We begin reaching out to City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart as well, to alert her to this possible misappropriation of taxpayer dollars.
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February 12: We hold our first small rally at City Hall on the theme “You Can’t Hack This,” holding up giant pencils provided by Spiral Q. Commissioner Deeley makes an appearance. We have their attention.
February 15: The President Judge of the Common Pleas Court issues an order replacing Commissioners Deeley and Schmidt on the Board of Elections because they are candidates—but vacates the order the same day. This is not revealed until September, in the Rhynhart Report.
February 20: Despite public testimony and explicit warnings from Auditor General DePasquale and City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart—and despite being candidates for reelection already—Deeley and Schmidt vote to select the ExpressVote XL as Philadelphia’s voting machine. The Inquirer reports the machines would cost $20 to $27 million. The actual cost turns out to be higher.
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Just hours later, Deeley throws a candidate fundraiser at the Palm, with Schmidt and Philadelphia’s Democratic party boss, Bob Brady, attending. Brady praises Deeley for getting “the right voting machines.”
February 21 and 22: Deeley and Schmidt request to be replaced on the Board of Elections, apparently for the second time. The law requires this when they become candidates, but they waited until after they could approve the voting machines.
March 2019
March 5: Our official birthday! We adopt the name Protect Our Vote Philly and start a newsletter with updates and action items related to the voting machine selection, along with a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and an email list. Founding member groups are Citizens for Better Elections, Huddle Up Philadelphia, Indivisible NW Philly, Indivisible Philadelphia, March on Harrisburg, and Philadelphia Neighborhood Networks.
POVPhilly members become regulars at weekly Board of Elections meetings, now held with acting board members, judges Giovanni Campbell and Vincent Furlong, in place of Deeley and Schmidt. POVPhilly argues that the Board should revoke the voting machine decision since it was made by active candidates in violation of the law. POVPhilly video records the meetings since the Board does not even provide transcripts to the public.
March 25: POVPhilly sends a letter to City Council members explaining why we are concerned about the voting machines and suggesting questions that Council members might ask during upcoming budget hearings.
April 2019
April 1: Controller Rhynhart issues a broad subpoena to the City Commissioners to get information about how the selection process was made. A few days later, Philadelphia magazine quotes Rhynhart: “I think the flawed nature of this process, the way the vote took place, is just wrong and so I’ll continue to do what I can do.”
April 2: Rhynhart sends a letter to the Board of Elections members urging them to vacate the Commissioners’ February 20 decision and to issue a new RFP. Commissioner Clark agrees that voting machine selection process should be restarted.
April 29: The Commissioners Office takes delivery of 83 ExpressVote XLs, even though no contract was signed yet. Commissioner Deeley goes on TV to show off the voting machines even though she is not on the Board of Elections and shouldn’t be touching them.
May 2019
May 1: The Inquirer reports that Controller Rhynhart may block payment on the voting machines. Separately, it reports that Commissioner Deeley lost her notary license because she participated in fraud and then failed to turn over copies of her notary book as required by her consent agreement with the State Department. The next day, POVPhilly calls on Deeley to resign.
May 6: The Philadelphia Citizen publishes a guest commentary from Commissioner candidates Moira Bohannon, Luigi Borda, Carla Cain, Marwan Kreidie and Dennis Lee, blasting the voting machine selection process and saying, "We do not believe this is the right decision and we do not believe it was made properly."
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May 7: POVPhilly members pack the city council hearing budget hearing on voting machines, holding signs making it clear we want to #StopTheMachine and get #HandMarkedPaperBallots. Commissioner candidate Jen Devor makes a statement against the machines during the hearing. The Commissioners Office quotes a cost of $29 million at the hearing—up significantly from the $20 to $27 million stated when they selected the machines on February 20th.
May 13: The City quietly signs a contract with ES&S for $29 million. The public doesn’t learn about this until after the primary.
May 20: Primary election. For City Commissioner nominations, Omar Sabir tops the field with 25% of the votes, while Deeley wins a place narrowly with 21%. Schmidt is unopposed on the Republican ballot. All three winners are heavily supported by the powerful building trades unions led by indicted Local 98 boss and Philadelphia power broker John Dougherty.
It is the last Philadelphia election held using the all-electronic Danaher 1242 voting machines. Meanwhile, Montgomery County is already using its new hand-marked paper ballot system, saving its taxpayers millions.
June 2019
June 3: Ralph Cipriano publishes A Cloud Of Corruption Over City's Purchase of New Voting Machines, in which Rhynhart reasserts her plan to make sure the voting machine contract is legal before releasing funds and Mayor Kenney’s spokesman goes after Rhynhart. We also learn that the city quietly signed the contract with ES&S weeks earlier! Machines actually cost up to $35 million, with software, supplies, storage, etc, likely adding another $20 million to the taxpayer bill.
June 16: POVPhilly begins reaching out to state legislators in Harrisburg, requesting they work to keep the ExpressVote XL out of Pennsylvania.
June 27: The U.S House of Representatives passes the Securing America’s Federal Elections (SAFE) Act. If passed in the Senate and signed into law, the SAFE Act would ban the ExpressVote XL. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prevents any election security bill from getting to the floor in the Senate. McConnell earns the nickname Moscow Mitch for continually blocking election security bills.
June 29: We welcome two new members of the Protect Our Vote Philly coalition: Represent Us Pennsylvania and the Clean Money Squad PA.
July 2019
July 11: The national progressive politics conference Netroots Nation meets in Philadelphia. POVPhilly hosts a very well-attended election security happy hour to honor election security experts presenting at the conference.
July 16: Citizens for Better Elections and POVPhilly, backed by Free Speech for People and the National Election Defense Coalition submit a petition detailing ten fatal flaws with the ExpressVote XL, each of which violates some part of the election code. The petition requires the Department of State to review the ExpressVote XL’s certification.
August 2019
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August 15: POVPhilly members come out in force to a Board of Election meeting called with 24 hours notice. During the meeting, Rhynhart shares an initial finding of her investigation: that ES&S did not properly disclose lobbying in their bid, giving the city a chance to cancel the contract and start again. Acting Board members Campbell and Furlong vote to keep this illegal contract. In a pre-written decision, Campbell and Furlong shrug off every public comment (except the one made by the ES&S lobbyist).
September 2019
September 3: Acting Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar releases the results of the ExpressVote XL re-examination required by the July 16 petition. Although the state maintained the machine’s certification, it added several requirements for using the machines. As POVPhilly anticipated, these requirements were not properly followed in either Philadelphia or Northampton—the two counties that used the ExpressVote XL on November 5.
September 12: We welcome the newest member of the Protect Our Vote Philly coalition: Philadelphia NOW (National Organization for Women).
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September 13: POVPhilly hosts open discussion on Philly’s voting machines at William Penn House in Center City.
September 16: We welcome another member to the POVPhilly coalition: the Unitarian Universalist Pennsylvania Legislative Advocacy Network (UUPLAN).
The Delaware County Board of Elections rejects the ExpressVote XL in favor of a hand-marked paper ballot system by Hart.
September 25: The City Controller’s Office releases the long-awaited Rhynhart Report, documenting significant wrong-doing in procuring the voting machines. Deeley and Schmidt had frequent unreported contacts with ES&S going back to 2013, took campaign contributions from ES&S lobbyists but failed to disclose these conflicts of interest, and got help from ES&S developing their budget request. Their staff pressured selection committee members to favor the ExpressVote XL. They failed to recuse themselves when they started campaigning for reelection, so they could remain on the Board to vote on the selection. The list goes on. However, Rhynhart states that she has no legal basis to block the funds.
October 2019
October 2: POVPhilly members join Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s 2016 candidate for president, as she put our state on notice that the ExpressVote XL is not acceptable under the terms of the Stein v Cortés settlement. Stein speaks at the Board of Elections meeting and then holds a press conference at the federal courthouse in Philly. The Inquirer, Washington Post, and many other news outlets across the country cover the story.
October 4: The Board of Elections publishes the sample ballot. Surprise—it requires two screens. Throughout the selection process, Commissioner Deeley had emphasized the importance of having the whole ballot fit on one screen or page, like on the old machines. This is called a “full-face” ballot. Since the ExpressVote XL was the only machine with a large screen, the Commissioners and their staff leaned hard on this justification. Full-faced, no. Two-faced, yes. POVPhilly calls the Board of Elections out on this full-faced lie on social media and at the next Board of Elections meeting.
October 31: Governor Wolf signs Act 77 into law, which makes major changes to our voting laws. We now have no-excuse absentee voting, registration deadlines closer to elections, and about $90 million in state money to help counties purchase new voting systems. But the formula for allocating that money rewards counties for choosing costly, insecure voting systems like the ExpressVote XL, while penalizing counties that choose less expensive hand-marked voting systems. We call it a gift to voting machine vendors.
November 2019
November 4: POVPhilly publishes a questionnaire about voting experiences, collecting more than 150 responses. We encourage all Philadelphia voters to fill it out, if you have not done so yet.
November 5: Philadelphia voters head to the polls and experience a variety of problems using the touchscreens and verifying their votes. Northampton County also uses the ExpressVote XL and its voters experience similar issues. Meanwhile, POVPhilly goes to election court to force the Board of Elections to publish its procedures to meet new Department of State requirements for the ExpressVote XL to maintain certification. The Board publishes its procedures under pressure from the judge, which allows POVPhilly and others to observe the procedures.
POVPhilly also notifies Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner about ongoing Board of Election violations. The Board routinely violates the Sunshine Act by making decisions behind closed doors. The letter also discusses how the Board’s election procedures fail to comply with the Department of State requirements. Since then, POVPhilly has discovered more violations; see also our November 29 newsletter.
After polls close, Philadelphia’s unofficial results come in unusually slowly. Meanwhile, Northampton County’s ExpressVote XL machines produce obviously inaccurate tallies. Northampton scrambles to find the winners using the barcodes on the vote summary cards. One judge that won based upon the initial tallies lost according to the barcode scans. This vote tally problem brings national attention to concerns about the ExpressVote XL. Northampton’s election board later voted no confidence in the machines.
November 6: POVPhilly publishes results of its election day questionnaire. More than half of our respondents complained of issues including long lines, touchscreen sensitivity problems, difficulty verifying printouts and unsecured USB sticks.
November 8: POVPhilly puts the Board on notice that its procedures to “commingle” ballot cards don’t meet the Secretary of State’s September 3 requirements, putting the certification of the election at risk. After consulting the Law Department, the Board goes ahead and does it wrong anyway.
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November 8–12: During five long days of observing the post-election procedures including the “commingling,” POVPhilly finds thousands of ballot summary cards from the November 5 election just sitting in an unlocked room in a warehouse. We document it on video and post it to FaceBook, where it is widely shared. We also find unsecured voting machines, as well as blank ballot cards, unguarded and accessible in various locations. POVPhilly publishes a report documenting these and other security lapses and shares it with the District Attorney, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State and others.
November 26: Jill Stein files a motion in federal court to require compliance with the Stein v Cortés settlement and force Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to decertify the ExpressVote XL.
November 27: Governor Wolf signs Act 94, which started as House Bill 227 with the subject “School Director Petition Signatures.” On November 19, Pa. Senator Kristin Phillips-Hill added an unrelated amendment to House Bill 227 in an attempt to address election-day problems in York County. The rushed bill does not actually solve the problems York had, but it does make ballot-box stuffing easier, especially on systems like the ExpressVote XL.
November 30: The New York Times prints A Pennsylvania County’s Election Day Nightmare Underscores Voting Machine Concerns, including explanations from Kevin Skoglund of Citizens For Better Elections, a POVPhilly coalition member. Kevin also appears on MSNBC Live with Katy Tur.
December 2019
December 12: The National Election Defense Coalition (NEDC), the Pennsylvania-based Citizens for Better Elections (CBE), and Pennsylvania voters including several POVPhilly members file a lawsuit to decertify the ExpressVote XL, arguing that it violates the Election Code and the state Constitution.
December 18: The City Commissioners create a new position to run elections, under the direct control of Commissioner Deeley. That means that more decisions can be made behind closed doors, without a public vote by the Board. POVPhilly is there to catch them in the act.
Because of concerns about the ExpressVote XL brought to him by POVPhilly, Pa. Senator Lawrence Farnese asks Governor Wolf to consider additional action, saying "now is the time to require all counties to review their voting machine selections."
December 19: Pa. Representatives Stephen Kinsey (Chair, Pa. Legislative Black Caucus), Jason Dawkins (Chair, Philadelphia Delegation) and Chris Rabb (Chair, House Democratic Equity Committee) ask Secretary Boockvar to investigate the ExpressVote XL and address the specific concerns of POVPhilly and others.
December 24: Dauphin County, which includes Harrisburg, drops the ExpressVote XL from consideration. “It is not worth the risk,” says Dauphin County Chief Clerk Chad Saylor. “We don’t want to move forward with a system and then at some point have to deal with legal concerns.”
December 30: POVPhilly wishes all a happy, healthy, and free 2020!
Thank You. Happy New Year, POVPhilly!
Even though most of us had to vote on the ExpressVote XL in November, we are well positioned to bring safer voting to Philadelphia in the year or years ahead. We’d hoped for a sprint, but we’ll stay for the marathon. Please stay with us and keep working to bring the gold standard of election technology — hand-marked paper ballots — to Philadelphia.
Thank you for all you have done so far. Have a wonderful new year.
Your friends at
Protect Our Vote Philly
Reply to this newsletter, comment on Facebook, or tweet to @POVPhilly. We’re always happy to hear your thoughts and ideas.
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About POVPhilly
Protect Our Vote Philly is a coalition working to bring accurate, accessible, and secure voting systems at a fair cost to Philadelphia. We believe the gold standard for election integrity is:
- hand-marked paper ballots
so we know our votes are cast as intended
- the best possible accessibility devices
so every voter can vote with maximum privacy and independence
- mandatory risk-limiting audits after every election
so we can be confident that every vote was counted as cast.
Protect Our Vote Philly is a watchdog over the Office of the City Commissioners, which operates elections in the City of Philadelphia. Because we believe Philadelphians have a right to the most secure voting system possible, we strongly oppose the system that the Commissioners selected, the ES&S ExpressVote XL, as well as the rushed and secretive process used to select it. The ExpressVote XL falls far short of the gold standard. It endangers our votes and wastes our resources. We are dedicated to stopping it.
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