NEW PAPER-BASED VOTING SYSTEMS COMING TO PENNSYLVANIA! 
But all voting systems that use paper are not truly verifiable

In 2018, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf ordered that all voting machines in Pennsylvania must be replaced with voting systems that use paper by 2020. That sounds great, but not every voting system that creates a paper record is verifiable by the voter. RIGHT NOW, as you are reading this, vendors and some state officials are pushing our counties to buy expensive touchscreen "ballot markers" for every voter. These devices count votes using barcodes or QR codes, not by the actual marks made by the voter on a real paper ballot. And that's BAD. Computer scientists warn us that there is no way for the voter to tell that these barcodes actually say what he or she intended, so the paper coming out of these touchscreens is not truly verifiable.

Expensive touchscreens are not needed for every voter. A plain fifty-cent pen works just fine for most people to fill in the ovals on a paper ballot. All that is required to comply with the Governor's directive and federal law is the paper ballot along with one accessible assistive device in each precinct for voters who need help to mark it. In most cases, each voter will insert his or her own ballot into a small, modern digital scanner before leaving the poll. It gets counted right in front of the voter and then is secured in a locked ballot box. This is the gold standard of voting systems right now -- the cheapest, most secure, and most auditable voting method available today. 

We don't want barcodes. We want real paper ballots, MARKED BY HAND for most voters, because every voter should be able to verify his or her choices and we need to be able to meaningfully audit our votes. Let's save taxpayer money and do this right!

Don't let YOUR county waste tax dollars on unnecessary junk. Join VotePA and learn how you can help.