In a county where election results often draw statewide attention, the Bucks County Board of Elections plays a central role in managing voting systems and protecting election integrity, according to Sarah Huffman writing for technical.ly.
When Pennsylvanians head to the polls, Bucks County is always in the spotlight. Often described as one of the swingiest counties in swing-state Pennsylvania, Bucks draws statewide and sometimes national attention every election cycle.
That pressure demands a system built to perform.
The Bucks County Board of Elections manages that system, and the infrastructure behind it is more sophisticated than many voters realize.
Voting in Bucks County runs on Clear Ballot machines, adopted in 2020 when Pennsylvania required all counties to switch to systems with voter-verifiable paper records.
The process is straightforward: voters fill out paper ballots by hand and feed them into a scanner, which records results and stores ballot images in a database.
Voters needing disability accommodations use ClearAccess, which allows them to fill out a ballot digitally and print it before scanning.
On Election Day, poll workers use KnowInk Poll Pad electronic pollbooks, tablet-based devices used to look up voters and verify registration status.
The pollbooks operate on a closed network with no connection to the public internet, a requirement of the Pennsylvania secretary of the commonwealth.
Behind the scenes, Bucks County uses Tenex Software Solutions‘ Election Force platform to manage poll worker training and scheduling, along with Live Results software that publishes election results as they come in.
Data security is built into the vendor contracts. All data belongs to the county. Vendors are required to encrypt data at all times, provide reports on who accessed it and whether anything was changed, and notify the county immediately in the event of a breach.
The county conducts logic and accuracy testing on all machines before each election. If a machine fails on Election Day, backup paper ballots are required to be on hand so voting continues without interruption.
To understand how these systems work in practice, read the full investigation from Technical.ly.
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