Berks County elections officials say they are taking steps to address some of the failures that led to primary election day problems.
Issues with electronic poll books that were being used countywide for the first time this spring caused confusion and delays at some precincts.
An investigation commissioned by the county into the failures concluded the issues originated with voter signatures not being uploaded to the new electronic polls books before election day. And that mistake led to a chain of other problems that caused confusion and challenges at the polls, the report says.
At an elections board meeting Thursday, the board provided information on what has already been done to address two of the six recommendations that resulted from the investigation.
The following are the recommendations:
• Poll workers should receive expanded hands-on training on the use of the electronic poll books.
• A direct line of communication should be established between elections services and the 202 polling precincts to ensure communications are received and addressed in a timely and efficient manner.
Commissioner Kevin Barnhardt said the county has ramped up its training efforts.
The county held four trainings this summer for poll workers on how to use the electronic poll books. The sessions were attended by more than 300 election workers.
And traditional poll worker training has also started. Barnhardt said there will be 31 sessions before Election Day that can accommodate up to a total of 1,900 people.
“There is a real effort here to educate our judges of elections, interpreters, our machine inspectors and our rovers,” he said.
As for the communication issues that arose during the primary, Barnhardt said the county has been working diligently over the last few months to improve communication to and from the election services office to polling locations on Election Day.
One of the components that should help facilitate better communication is the hiring of additional rovers. Barnhardt said the county will have twice the number of rovers than it has in the past.
A rover is responsible for responding to and resolving requests submitted by voters at polling locations.
“We had been using about 10 rovers in previous elections,” Barnhardt said. “Now we will have 20, plus two backups. There will be a rover coordinator stationed in the elections office, and those rovers will be networking directly with that coordinator.”
Barnhardt said the county will also have a bank of phones manned by staff members and interpreters who will be taking calls from the public. There will be a separate phone line for judges of elections to call, a move that should make it easier for them to speak to election office personnel.
“IT did some data mining of the calls coming into election services and found that it is an astronomical number of calls,” Barnhardt said. “So we want to funnel these calls to the right people by putting the general public in one pod, the rovers and constables in another pod and the judges of elections in another pod.”
Barnhardt said he believes the steps being taken will help the general election operate more smoothly than the primary.
“We feel that all these efforts are going to be worthwhile as we move forward to the election,” he said. “We’ve learned a lot and we are building from that. We can always improve, but we have confidence that a lot of things that we talked about in May are being corrected as we speak.”
Barnhardt said voters should not be concerned about facing problems in November similar to those that took place in the spring.
“I want to give people that vote of confidence that things are well under control with our team,” he said. “Things are looking up.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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