Why did Pa change from a voting machine to paper ballot ?

What prevents people filling in paper ballots and into the scanner it goes ?

Because machines spread rice rabies but paper ballots handled by multiple people and filled out by multiple people using the same pens, chairs, tables, and folders doesn't.



Nothing.

This will be a long post but bear with me.

I volunteered to work this election because I wanted to see how the sausage was made and I'm in Allegheny County which I figured would be a hot bed of issues.  I was not assigned to work a precinct until last week and  given ZERO training.  The judge of elections for the precinct I would work at gave me a copy of the elections manual three days ago which surprised me; paper ballots?

The reasoning I was given was 1) Muh-Rona and 2) They wanted an actual paper backup to the electronic scantron reader (DS200) .

None of us in our precinct had worked an election before not even our judge of elections.  Only two had gone through the training (Judge and one other) so the rest of us were plopped into this precinct last minute because of lack of volunteers.  Our constable died a week ago so some rando got appointed to that for the this election.

The absolute biggest issue we had were mail in ballots.  Period.  Lots of people requested them and voted by them but many did not trust the USPS so they never mailed them and many did not find the local drop boxes for them so they showed up to vote in person.  

Since we were all new we followed the flow chart which said the person could A) go downtown and turn in their ballot B) Turn in their ballot to us, have us surrender it and mark it up so it was unreadable, and then they could vote in person, or C) if they did not have their ballot AND secrecy sleeve/envelope to surrender they had to vote provisionally.  

If they turned in their ballot/secrecy sleeve there was paperwork for the voter and we had to markup those ballots so the machine would not read them.  This was fun with a sharpie and all.  Anyway, there were four precincts where I was working.  Some other judge of elations came to us and asked if we had any more provisional ballots.  We said yes but why.

Simply put, they were having the same issue (people showing up with the mail in ballots and wanting to vote in person instead.)  They were collecting their mail in ballots and marking them up, giving them the paperwork, but having these people vote provisionally.  These are the last ballots to be counted, the very last, and only after the others were counted.  This issue was resolved with all of the judges of election getting together with a roving election person from the county and quickly figuring this out.

The reason for the error was relatively simple; everyone was used to the machines we had used in the past (those who had done it before) and apparently the training did not focus on this issue at all.  Secondly, people are simply idiots and didn't read the manual.

Now, imagine how many "disenfranchised" voters might come out of this with the lawsuits and other lawfare that is going down.

Lastly, regarding the concern of just jamming ballots into the machine, we actually talked about that.  We said, what is to stop someone, other than their good will and ethics, from filling out ballots, singing someone's name to the poll book, and jamming them in the machine?  We obviously did not do this and were concerned someone might so we kept a close watch over all our unmarked ballots and from what I could tell so did all of the other precincts present.  It wasn't an issue at our location and we all sort of backchecked each other (the other precincts) at the end of the night on our voter numbers.  It was all good.

Also, we had two people go to drop off the finished ballots and turn them in after the polls closed.  If anyone forgets they have ballots in their car it is complete and utter horseshit.  The procedure, if followed, requires multiple witnesses, multiple witness signatures, seals, seal tape, etc.  We counted and then double counted everything and then counted again.  If some rando judge of elections "forgets" they had ballots in their car I'm going to call complete BS on it and say they are a paid operative.

Oh, and we had more poll watchers than we knew what to do with that noted anything and everything about what happened.  We ran a tight ship but I can only speak for our location.  

In all I can say there were ten or eleven ways to game the system we came up with last night.  Jamming pre-filled ballots into the machine and faking who voted was one.  The machine could be uncalibrated and therefore read wrong, the encrypted flash drives could be compromised, extra seals could be given to a judge of elections so substitutes could be put into the bag being turned in after a team had already sealed it up.  Once they are turned in some lawyer/observers could say that seals were broken and not count votes from a precinct with high turnout (R or D but we know how this works).  

Just keep in mind the normal people working these elections want to do the right thing and did the best they could.  If someone shows up with a trunk full of Biden votes it's cheating plain and simple.

Bradford County here. We had the machine, printed the slip and fed it into the final machine that gave the red/green light. I was surprised when I saw people from PA in different threads saying they got paper ballots.

For sure Allegheny and Philly counties used paper (on purpose).

Erie county here, paper ballots and sharpies.

Because vote flipping:

https://wmbriggs.com/post/33377/

Philly machine: