On Tuesday, I had the experience of serving as a poll worker in Chester County. Transitioning from my professional life of building complex systems to this role is always a bit of a shock.

The primary technology we rely on is a printed voter roll book and a vote tabulator. As a clerk, my responsibilities included checking in voters who sign our printed book, allowing us to maintain a running list of those who had voted. The technology often feels straight out of the 1800s.

This November, the limitations of this old-school approach became painfully evident. At 6:58 AM, just two minutes before opening and with 30 voters in line, we faced a big failure. The printed voter roll books were missing all 75,000 registered independent voters.

An investigation is currently underway into the people, processes, and systems involved in poll book printing. A simple “spot check” of the printed books could have identified this error.

However, the real takeaway here is about resilience. The paper-based system lacks any modern recovery plan. New paper books were produced, but they didn’t arrive at our polling location until after 3:00 PM, resulting in an 8-hour recovery time.

We deserve better, and our voters deserve better. In Pennsylvania, electronic poll books are available and in use, but not yet in Chester County. While it’s possible that a similar data error could occur with electronic books, the recovery time would not have been 8 hours.

In our location, no one was turned away and the voters were very understanding. Our voters are our neighbors, and despite the error, we adapted and managed to facilitate voting with provisional ballots. A process that takes about 5 times longer, and requires the voter to be independently verified after the election, before the vote is counted.

Here are some details on exactly what went down:

What happened with Chester County’s pollbook printing problem? - An article from Spotlight PA detailing how county officials mistakenly excluded third-party and unaffiliated voters from printed pollbooks, forcing over 12,000 voters to use provisional ballots on Election Day.

Voting in Chester County, Pennsylvania, extended until 10 p.m. after poll book issues - CBS News reports that poll books in Chester County mistakenly excluded unaffiliated, independent, and third-party voters, forcing thousands to use provisional ballots and causing polls to stay open late.

Chester County lawmakers call for investigation into poll book errors on Election Day 2025 - An official news release from the Chester County State House Delegation announcing their formal request for a state investigation into the November 4 election poll book errors.

More PA counties adopt electronic pollbooks to speed voting - An article from Spotlight PA explaining that over half of Pennsylvania’s counties are now using electronic pollbooks (tablet-style devices) instead of paper lists to check in voters. The article details how the technology, funded in part by 2022 state legislation (Act 88), speeds up voting, improves accuracy for post-election reconciliation, and is considered essential for any future implementation of in-person early voting. It also notes that cost can be a barrier, and further legislation to fund and standardize e-pollbooks is currently stalled in the state Senate.