Federal officials to test Maricopa County's electronic poll books in pilot program

National election officials will spend the next two weeks testing Maricopa County's electronic poll books as part of a pilot program to inform the further development of guidelines for poll book systems across the country.

That means the county is about to find out if its electronic poll books, known as SiteBooks, could be a model for other jurisdictions — and if there are opportunities for improvement.

Electronic poll books are the computer systems at polling sites that contain information about registered voters and are used by poll workers to check in voters.

"I'm very confident in the security that we've implemented related to our SiteBooks, and I'm confident in the usability, based off of feedback we've gotten from poll workers and others," said Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett. "But can we get even better? Potentially. And participating in a pilot program like this could yield some of those answers."

County supervisors signed off on participating in the program last month, and the testing will be done in July, according to the agreement between local and federal officials. A report with findings and recommendations could be drafted as early as August, federal officials said.

The pilot comes amid increased scrutiny of election operations across the country. While there are federal and state standards for testing accessible voting machines and tabulators, which are used to tally votes, there are currently no national guidelines on secondary election technology like electronic poll books.

U.S. Election Assistance Commissioner Donald Palmer, who previously served as Virginia's top election official and was nominated to the commission by former President Donald Trump in 2019, said the goal of the pilot program is to develop guidelines that will standardize electronic poll book security checks for jurisdictions across the country, improve national security posture and increase trust in elections.

"The state or locality can continue their own testing or feel confident that they have the stamp of approval from the EAC on these systems," he said. "We're really trying to model it based on what has been a successful testing program with our voting systems."

On the ballot: Glendale voters can expect bond measures on ballot for road improvements, public safety

Expanding the scope of election security beyond ballot casting and counting

Numerous government reports have established that machines that cast and count votes nationally and in Maricopa County are accurate and secure.

But on a national level, some lawmakers and elections officials have raised concerns about the security of electronic poll books and other secondary election technology that connects to the internet.

In 2018, a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report investigating Russian attacks on election infrastructure during the 2016 presidential election warned that some electronic poll books may be vulnerable to interference. U.S. Election Assistance Commission officials have said they believe such attacks might increase in future elections.

Maricopa County's SiteBooks and ballot-on-demand printers are tested for security vulnerabilities by the county's cybersecurity and information technology experts before every election cycle, Jarrett said. Over the years, election officials have hardened the SiteBooks to prevent unauthorized access, he said.

That includes physically blocking the machines' ports so that nothing can be inserted into them and programming the machines to shut down entirely if tampering occurs.

Similar security features to control access are mentioned in the list of draft guidelines that national officials hope to test and refine with the pilot program. The draft guidelines also spell out requirements for accessibility, such as ensuring that poll books can display information in various languages, and best practices for network security, including encrypting data and configuring software firewalls.

Voting opens: Prescott primary election

Maricopa County's home-grown electronic poll book system

About 2,000 voting jurisdictions across the country use electronic poll books, election officials said.

Most use software and equipment purchased from election equipment vendors. Five of the largest — ES&S, KNOWiNK, Tenex Software Solutions, Robis Elections and VOTEC Corporation — will participate in the EAC's pilot program.

The two jurisdictions participating in the pilot program, Maricopa County and the state of North Carolina, run their electronic poll books on home-grown software.

Nationally, eight states have developed their own poll book software. Five states — Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Tennessee and Texas — have at least one county that has created in-house software.

Maricopa County developed its SiteBooks in 2018, Jarrett said. Up until then, local election officials were using different software that required voting rosters to be manually uploaded. That resulted in a "major, labor-intensive process" ahead of Election Day, Jarrett said.

Now, the county's SiteBooks connect to the internet, meaning the rosters are updated in real time. The software also has several unique features that allow the devices to be used for more than just checking in voters, Jarrett said.

These features allow elections officials to remotely monitor what is going on at polling locations, including wait-time reporting, when techs are on site and when SiteBooks are getting set up, he said.

"It really allows us to meet our operational needs beyond just the static check-in system," Jarrett said.

Jarrett said those features could be helpful to other jurisdictions, and he'd like to see the EAC take them into consideration while drafting their guidelines.

"If we've implemented something really great here that they haven't seen based off of these other vendors, that can be incorporated into those minimum standards, improving the entire election landscape," he said. "We want to make sure that they're considering some of the unique things that we've done."

Sasha Hupka covers Maricopa County, Pinal County and regional issues for The Arizona Republic. Do you have a tip to share on elections or voting? Reach her at sasha.hupka@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter: @SashaHupka.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Maricopa County to test poll books as part of national pilot program