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Smart Use of Electronic Poll Books Can Reduce Long Lines on Election Day

Long lines at polling places, often due to precinct consolidation and absentee ballot failures, have garnered outsize attention during the spring primary elections. But close followers of election news may have been intrigued to see media and observers refer to something called “electronic poll books,” which improve the voting experience when working well.

Electronic poll books, also called e-poll books or EPBs, are a modernization of paper voter rolls that are meant to simplify and speed up the check-in process during in-person voting. Traditionally, when a voter arrives at a polling place, a poll worker checks to make sure their name is in a paper poll book that lists all the eligible voters in that precinct—which means looking through hundreds or even thousands of names listed in alphabetical order. The poll worker then makes a mark or the voter signs somewhere near their name. The paper process sometimes leads to signatures on the wrong lines, complicating checking in for voters who appear later in the day. At polling places with EPBs, poll workers use a laptop or tablet to quickly search for a voter’s name to verify that they’re eligible to vote there.

So, are EPBS to blame for long lines, or do they speed up the voting process? And are they more or less secure than paper alternatives?

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Here are the facts:

As of last year, EPBs were being used in 41 states and the District of Columbiaf.. But this year, EPBs have been linked to problems in several states during the primaries. During a special primary election in Maryland, election officials reported serious slowdowns in EPBs that were linked via wireless network to the state’s voter database. This wireless connection was intended to allow the state to see real-time data about turnout, but it slowed down the check-in process and caused some voters to experience delays. Long lines in Los Angeles County during the March primary have also been linked to EPB malfunctions. Recently, some election cybersecurity experts have raised concerns that hackers could exploit bugs in EPBs to cause election night chaos if they’re connected to wireless networks.

So why, given all these potential problems, do so many states continue to use EPBs? The simple answer is that for most, the overall usefulness outweighs the risks.
EPBs can do more than just allow voters to sign in electronically. If a voter shows up at the wrong polling place, poll workers can quickly see the problem and redirect that voter to the correct site. In states that allow same-day registration, voters can also register to vote on an EPB. EPBs notify poll workers on Election Day if a voter has already cast an absentee ballot or cast an in-person ballot during the early voting period, providing a safeguard against double voting. They can also give election officials real-time updates about participation levels at different polling places.

EPBs can significantly speed up the process of checking voters in, cutting down on delays in the voting process. For instance, in some jurisdictions EPBs include barcode scanners, which gives voters the option to simply scan their driver’s license or state-issued ID to check in where such identification is needed. Scanning results in the voter’s record being pulled up immediately, which cuts down on errors like signing in the wrong person. Previous research from the Bipartisan Policy Center identified check-in as an important bottleneck in the in-person voting process. Speeding up that process with EPBs can have a tangible impact on reducing the time that voters have to wait in line.

There are other benefits to election administration. For example, election administrators can use EPBs to collect real-time data about turnout and redeploy resources if turnout in a particular precinct is higher than expected and causing long lines.

EPBs can also help poll workers instantly identify double voting. During the recent primary election in Philadelphia, a handful of voters cast absentee ballots but, because they were unsure whether their ballots were received and counted, showed up to vote in person as well. Philadelphia uses paper ballots, which require election administrators to physically attach a list of late absentee ballot requests to the front of the paper poll book. Poll workers must check both the alphabetical list and the late absentee ballot list to ensure a voter can cast a regular ballot. These voters in Philadelphia should have been offered a provisional ballot so that administrators could determine after the polls closed whether their absentee ballot had been received and counted. Instead those voters were accidentally given a regular ballot and ultimately voted twice. Philadelphia identified the error, but removing those double votes stopped the counting process for five days. This problem could have been entirely avoided if Philadelphia used EPBs instead of paper poll books, because poll workers would have been alerted immediately when voters checked in on Election Day if someone had already voted early or cast an absentee ballot.

BPC’s Task Force on Elections recommended in January that states implement EPBs at all voting sites. Both voters and election administrators can benefit from EPBs, as long as poll workers and election officials follow some basic best practices. Each state has its own testing and certification process for EPBs, and some states currently have no security standards that EPBs are required to meet. Georgia’s primary election disaster highlighted that technical problems at the polls often stem from polls workers not having adequate training with the machines or systems being used, not from inherent technological flaws. The long lines in Los Angeles County caused by EPB problems might have been avoided with better poll worker training and testing.
Safeguarding the 2020 election means investing in a wide array of cybersecurity measures. But technologies like EPBs can, when deployed in a secure manner, improve the voter experience and help ensure the legitimacy of elections.

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