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November election won’t have referendum on voting machines

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There will not be a referendum in the Nov. 8 general election asking Washington County voters whether they want to get rid of the electronic voting machines after the group pushing the effort failed to gather enough signatures to place the question on the ballot.

Several residents spoke at Thursday afternoon’s Washington County Board of Commissioners meeting in favor of placing the referendum on the ballot, citing two separate petition drives over the summer pushing to decommission the county’s electronic voting machines in favor of paper ballots.

However, county solicitor Jana Grimm gave a lengthy statement following the public comment period in which she announced the petition drive failed to garner enough signatures and that federal laws preempt the referendum from being considered even if the group had met the requirements.

“Even if such a referendum were permitted by the law and the petition sheets submitted on Sept. 9, 2022, were in correct form, they did not contain the number of signatures required,” Grimm said.

The group would have needed 5,193 signatures from registered voters in Washington County, which was 10% of the total turnout for last year’s municipal election.

The group’s leader, Fallowfield Township resident Ashley Duff, submitted the petitions to the county’s elections office last Friday, but it did not have enough signatures to be formally accepted. The drive generated 4,032 signatures, which was more than 1,000 short of what was needed to get the referendum question on the ballot. In a letter dated Sept. 8 that she submitted with the petitions, Duff asked the elections office to also accept a previous drive the group had submitted in July that garnered more than 2,100 signatures.

But Grimm said there were “material defects” with the original petition sheets that made it fatally flawed and could not be included in the count. It was not known how many of the 4,032 signatures in the newer petition were in correct form, duplicated or from out-of-county voters. Elections officials said they did not plan to review that petition since it did not get close to the 5,193 signature threshold to be considered.

Just as problematic for the group are federal laws that Grimm said preempt the ability to remove the electronic voting systems used by the county. She pointed to the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 that required such voting machines and offered accessible options for people with disabilities. She added that there is no ability for the county to put a non-binding referendum question on the ballot.

“Based on all of the above, this question will not appear on the Nov. 8, 2022, ballot in Washington County,” Grimm said.

Commission Chairwoman Diana Irey Vaughan asked Grimm to speak to the audience that attended Thursday’s county meeting to update them on the petition drive and the inability for elections officials to place the referendum on the ballot.

“I hope that helps to answer your questions,” Irey Vaughan said. “And this really is a legislative issue, so if there are changes that you would like made legislatively, I would suggest that you speak with your legislators.”

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