Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is ordering counties that plan to replace their electronic voting systems to buy machines that leave a paper trail.

The Democrat’s administration says the move will increase the security of voting systems and make balloting easier to audit.

Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where most voters use antiquated machines that store votes electronically without printed ballots or other paper-based backups that could be used to double-check the vote. The older machines make it almost impossible to know if they’ve accurately recorded individual votes or if anyone tampered with the count.

The state is not requiring counties to discard their old equipment. The directive only requires them to buy machines with a paper backup if they decide to switch systems.

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald later in the day issued a statement applauding the order, but noted that funding for new machines will be an issue.

“Voters have been advocating for a measure such as this for years. For Allegheny County, two hurdles have prevented us from making such a change. The first, the state authorization of equipment that meet this standard, has now been removed. The second hurdle, that of funding for the purchase of new machines, remains. I join Governor Wolf in continuing to advocate for the federal government to provide more resources to update voting machines.

“We have approximately 4,600 voting machines in the county. They were purchased in 2006 with funding provided by the federal government through the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Each year, those machines and the firmware on them go through airgap and parallel testing procedures to ensure their integrity. The results of those procedures are also publicly available on the county’s website for anyone to read and review.

“Recent estimates indicate that it could cost as much as $26 million for the county to purchase 1,322 ballot scanners for the precincts and some type of ballot-marking device for handicapped voters. Additional funding would also need to be budgeted to address other mechanical and functional issues that we do not have with our current machines. Such an investment is not something that we can currently commit from the county budget, but should instead come from federal funding.”

First Published: February 9, 2018, 6:58 p.m.