While the 535 voting machines used in Butler County elections since 2006 cannot be hacked, they can lose calibration and are nearing the end of their useful life.

Shari Brewer, the director of the county elections bureau, said because neither the electronic voting machines nor the system used to process the votes are connected to the Internet, they cannot be hacked by nefarious individuals looking to manipulate an election.

The only problem Brewer has seen with the machines is their transportation to the polls after being very carefully calibrated ahead of the election.

“In transport, the machines get knocked around and they'll sometimes get knocked out of calibration,” Brewer said.

In those cases, which she said many other counties face, someone voting straight party Republican might see the Democrat choice light up after their vote.

Brewer said the glitch is very rare, and all poll workers are trained in the procedure to be used in each situation.

She said the poll workers close the doors on the uncalibrated machine and move the voter to another machine to cast his vote.

A “rover” from the election bureau is then called and comes to the polling place to recalibrate the machine. When the rover recalibrates the machine, the incorrect vote is eliminated, Brewer said.

In last year's Presidential election, seven voting machines were incorrectly calibrated but no incorrect votes were recorded.

“I am confident of these machines, that they canvas the ballots correctly,” Brewer said.

The current voting machines were purchased by the county for $1.6 million in early 2006. Before that, voters closed the curtain in a booth and pulled a series of levers to manually record their vote.

The vendor which provided the machines told county commissioners at the time that the electronic machines would last from 10 to 15 years.

“It's getting to the point where we're going to have to replace them,” Brewer said.

She said the county commissioners are currently entertaining presentations by various vendors to get a jump on the process of buying new machines and do so at the lowest possible cost.

Further complicating the county's plan to buy new voting machines is an unfunded mandate issued in February by Gov. Tom Wolf.

The mandate requires all counties in the state to use voting machines that can issue a paper record of individual votes to protect elections from fraud.

Brewer said the cost to replace the existing number of voting machines would be $5 million to $6 million. That number would rise if a printer were also needed for the machines.

She said the products of all vendors selling voting apparatus must be certified first by the federal government and then the state, including the voting system, software, machines and printers.

Some companies are fully-certified and some are still in that process, Brewer said.

Leslie Osche, chairman of the county commissioners, said the commissioners have seen presentations by two companies for a new voting system and machines.

She said one more is scheduled and two more are awaiting certification.

The machines the commissioners have seen so far also are not connected to the Internet, so they cannot be hacked.

She said because of Wolf's mandate, there are two types of machines being shopped around in Pennsylvania.

One is a paper ballot with a bubble beside each candidate to be filled in manually by the voters with a pen or pencil. The other is an electronic machine with a receipt-like paper that prints out when the voter is finished casting his ballot.

Osche said the problem with the paper ballots is that they can also be knocked out of calibration.

The other option, Osche said, resembles a large electronic tablet or iPad that prints a receipt when the voter is finished. The voter then checks the receipt and drops it in a ballot box.

The commissioners knew when they took office in 2016 that they would one day face replacing the voting machines, and they want to do so at the least financial burden.

“You want to protect the election process, but you have to look at the financial impact too,” Osche said.

She said some municipalities, like Cherry Valley in the northern part of the county, see only 12 voters in a presidential election while places like Adams Township see lines form at the polling places.

“We are trying to find the most flexible solution,” Osche said.

She said she would not be in favor of a tax increase to pay for new voting machines.

Osche is grateful the commissioners have some time to select new machines, as the current ones work and there is no presidential election until 2020.

“We want to take our time and do it right,” she said.

Neither Brewer nor the commissioners take the county's responsibility to its voters lightly, and all want to make the right decision regarding new voting machines.

“It's one of the key things the county government does,” Osche said, “so it's important.”