Sasha Hupka
Arizona Republic
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.”
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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.
