Media Advisory: Philadelphia City Commissioners to Vote on New Election System
WHAT: Philadelphia City Commissioners to vote on a new election system that employs a voter-verifiable paper ballot and new electronic poll book system
WHERE: Philadelphia City Commissioners’ Voter Registration Office 520 N Columbus Blvd, 6th Floor Hearing Roo
WHEN: Wednesday, February 20, 2019, 11:00am
ABOUT: The City Commissioners had been working to select a new election system with an auditable voter-verifiable paper ballot for an anticipated implementation in the Primary of 2021 when the Wolf administration informed counties that they must have a new voting system selected no later than December 31, 2019, and preferably in place by the November 2019 General Election. After this announcement and several meetings with the now Acting Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar, the Commissioners sped up the timeline in order to implement the new voting system for Governor Wolf’s preferred rollout date, the 2019 General Election. On January 28, 2019 the security experts at the University of Pittsburgh and The Blue Ribbon Commission on Pennsylvania’s Election Security released their study, where they recommended that all counties implement “systems using voter-marked paper ballots (either by hand or by machine) before 2020 and preferably for the November 2019 election”, a recommendation that Philadelphia will follow.
The City Commissioners’ action ensures that Philadelphia will have a safe, secure, resilient, and certified election system for the 2020 Presidential Election. The Commissioners will also be voting on replacing the existing paper poll books with electronic poll books. This new technology will speed up voter check-ins and be able to direct voters to the correct division or polling place if they are in the wrong location.
On February 12, 2019, in response to the RFP, the selection committee recommended that further negotiations commence with the two proposers receiving the highest overall scores for both voting machines and electronic poll books. On February 16, 2019 the Procurement Commissioner submitted two voting system proposers and two electronic poll book proposers to the City Commissioners for consideration. The redacted letter from the Procurement Commissioner is attached to this advisory.
PDFs of announcement and redacted letter from procurement are available.