PITTSBURGH (Newsradio 1020 KDKA) - Pennsylvania's primary elections were held this week - delayed from the usual May date due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Kathy Boockvar, PA Secretary of the Commonwealth and Senior Adviser to the Governor on Election Modernization, told KDKA Radio's Larry Richert and Kevin Battle that the mail-in voting process was a success.
Boockvar said that because of mail-in ballots, the state had higher than expected turnout. "The last time we had a non-contested Presidential primary, which was 2012, we had 1.5 million voters turnout and we're looking at closer to 2.5 million, so big difference."
She explained that action taken by the legislature in the fall really helped Pennsylvania get through the Coronavirus pandemic as it relates to the primary election. "Act 77 passed in the fall, which was really historic bi-partisan legislation, giving more options to voters than in over eight decades. Turns out, can't imagine how we would have gotten through the COVID-19 pandemic without it, because mail-in ballots were voted by over 1.4 million Pennsylvanians," she said.
With mail-in voting and many polling places using paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines in the primary, the question of whether or not the state returns to using the electronic machines or continues to use paper for the fall's Presidential election comes into play. Boockvar said modern technologies combined with paper are the most advanced methods she's seen.
"The new systems I often talk about as the best combination of the newest technology, so those scanners - the high speed, high capacity scanners that the counties do centrally and the precinct scanners voters do in the precincts - those technologies as well as ADA accessible marking devices are the most secure, accessible modern technology that we've ever seen in Pennsylvania or across the country," she said. "You combine the highest level of security with the tangibility and audibility of that paper. It's like a perfect marriage of the paper and the technology and that's considered state-of-the-art, best technology for voting."