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LOCK HAVEN -- Fresh off the Christmas holiday break, the Clinton County Commissioners had very little on their agenda Thursday morning, but they were able to provide an update on the voting machine mandate facing all counties in the state of Pennsylvania.
"We will be meeting with a fourth vendor company that manufactures these machines and review their models. Once we decide on the model and company that we like the best, there may be some type of public demonstration between the spring primary and the fall election. Tom Wolf, the governor, says they will cover 50 percent of the costs. We have included a $450,000 figure in our 2019 budget to account for these voting machines, but we hope to be able to put that money back into the fund balance," Commissioner Robert "Pete" Smeltz said.
All 67 of the counties in the state will be required to have a voting system on order by the end of next year that creates a paper trail to account for each and every ballot that is cast, the Wolf Administration's Department of State has said.
The fear, according to state officials, is the possibility of being hacked. With the new systems, a hacker would have to have access to nearly 100 machines just to sway a countywide race, officials say.
Currently there are 83 voting machines in Clinton County, and replacing them all would be an enormous cost to the county. The commissioners have been doing their due diligence in trying to secure additional funding for months.
"An upgrade to our existing machines cannot be done, it is not possible," commissioner Jeffrey Snyder said.
"We are very pleased with the governor for this 50 percent commitment, but at this point we are pushing for at least another 20 percent," said Snyder.
The board clarified that any public demonstration would be announced at a later date, and that they are "not at that point yet in the process."
"We did mention the need for funding to state representative Stephanie Borowicz. She is aware of it," Smeltz said.
On Thursday, the board also approved a correction to the annual salary of Kimberly Phillips, payroll/benefits administrator, which was incorrectly listed on the Dec. 20 agenda. The salary of Phillips should have been listed as $46,488 annually, instead of the $46,688 figure.