As it became clear in recent months that Bucks County was struggling with its decision to purchase new voting machines, some consolation was found in the fact that other Pennsylvania counties were having similar difficulties. Meeting this week's federal deadline for having new machines in place wasn't only going to be impossible for Bucks, it appeared. If Washington withheld funding as a penalty for missing the deadline, then Bucks County didn't stand to be the only loser.

 

Or so it seemed.

 

Then Tuesday came, the statewide primary election was held, and Bucks County had the dubious distinction of being the only county in the commonwealth using old voting machines that the law says are now obsolete. While voters in every one of Pennsylvania's 66 other counties voted on electronic machines, Bucks Countians once again flipped levers on 50-year-old mechanical machines.

 

New machines have been ordered and will be here for the November general election. That's unlikely to appease the feds, however, who had threatened to dock the county nearly $1 million for not having new machines ready to go on May 16.

 

The county commissioners repeatedly blamed their failure to make a timely purchase on federal and state officials, whom they accused of foot-dragging in certifying machines that would comply with the law.

 

The selection process may also have been slowed by the commissioners' efforts to appease local citizens--most notably those belonging to the Coalition for Voting Integrity--who strongly protested against the type of electronic machine the county eventually decided to buy. The coalition claims the Danaher voting system is unreliable and vulnerable to tampering, and it continues to press for new voting machines that produce a voter-verified paper record--that is, a marked ballot that assures voters their votes are being recorded correctly.

 

Still, whatever problem or problems led to Bucks County's not ordering new voting machines in time, they were not problems unique to Bucks. How, then, did every other county facing the task of replacing outdated machines manage to do so on time? That's a question officials in Washington will want answered as they consider Bucks County's request that it incur no financial penalty for not complying with federal law. As Pennsylvania's lone derelict, Bucks would seem to have a pretty weak case. If it loses its appeal, local taxpayers could be on the hook for an additional $1 million.

 

Someone has to be held responsible for that kind of mistake, the commissioners simply cannot be allowed to attribute a million-dollar goof-up to circumstances that every other county was able to overcome. As the elected executives of the county, Commissioners Jim Cawley, Charley Martin and Sandy Miller are ultimately in charge of seeing that something like the voting machine debacle doesn't happen.

 

That it did is embarrassing and could be very costly. And it's not something they can be proud of when and if they choose to stand for re-election next year.