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Board of Elections

Clear Ballot - Bucks County Voting Machines

The Clear Ballot system, which uses hand-marked paper ballots, was selected by the elections board on Nov. 27, 2019 and approved by the county commissioners on Dec. 4, 2019.

The decision came after many months of research and deliberations, which included three well-attended public demonstrations of the various machines under consideration. Those sessions exposed hundreds of polling place workers and voters to the Clear Ballot machines, and the upcoming trainings will supplement that exposure.

Clear Ballot is a voter-verified paper ballot system that uses ballots lacking bar codes or QR codes. Voters complete paper ballots by hand and feed them into a scanner, which drops the ballot into a ballot bag for transportation to the Board of Elections office at the end of Election Day.

The Clear Ballot scanners also scan an image of the completed ballots and tabulate results from each precinct for efficient Election Night reporting. All tabulated and scanned images are kept in a secured database and do not touch the Internet.  

The Clear Ballot system also provides a ballot-marking device for each polling place for voters who require ADA provisions. The ballot-marking device prints a ballot identical to those provided to non-ADA voters at the polling place before it is fed into a scanner.

In April 2018, all Pennsylvania counties were informed by the Commonwealth that they must select new voting systems that provide a verifiable paper record, and that those new systems be in place no later than the 2020 primary.

For a look at what you'll be seeing next time you are at the polls, check out the videos below:

ClearCast Scanner
ClearAccess Ballot Marking Device

Information on the Clear Ballot system:

How to Vote at Your Polling Place
The Benefits of Hand-Marked Paper Ballots
What to Expect at Your Polling Place
What to Expect from Bucks County Board of Elections

Are you an Election Official? Go to the Election Officials page for information on Opening/Closing the Polls with the Clear Ballot system.

Bucks County Board of Elections 
55 E. Court St. 
Doylestown, PA 18901 
Board of Elections - 215-348-6154 
elections@buckscounty.org
Hours: 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday

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