Piazza eyes state cash for machine warranty

Luzerne County Election Bureau Director Leonard Piazza headed to Harrisburg on Tuesday to fight for funding to cover a $300,000 warranty on the county’s electronic voting machines.

Piazza said he can’t go into detail about his discussions with state election officials because the matter may end up in litigation. He plans to seek an executive session to talk about the county’s options at the September election board meeting.

Concerns about election system warranties are cropping up all over the country, Piazza said.

“Luzerne doesn’t stand alone in this. I’m glad a number of counties are standing with us on this issue,” Piazza said Tuesday.

In a letter Piazza recently sent to state officials, he said the machine vendor – Election Systems & Software – had declined to go into detail about the warranty when the machines were purchased in 2006. The company said warranty coverage could be negotiated at a later date.

“Today, however, that is not the case,” Piazza wrote. He said the company won’t lower the $300,000 charge to cover a three-year, extended warranty. The company is “unwilling to restructure the coverage plan to meet the needs of the counties” and has not answered the county’s repeated requests for the exact terms and conditions of the extended warranty plan.

“ES&S misleads its customers in the Commonwealth, and judging from conversations with other election directors at a recent election officials’ conference in Portland, Oregon — other jurisdictions as well,” Piazza wrote.

The state should get involved because “we cannot individually deal with such a large, multinational corporation and the mix of deception this company promulgates,” Piazza wrote.

Amanda Brown, an ES&S spokeswoman, said in a written response that the company is committed to the county and its voters and “strives to be responsive to the needs of our customers.”

“However, in regard to concerns Luzerne County has expressed surrounding pricing, we have a difference of opinion,” she wrote.

Brown said the warranty pricing terms for Luzerne County are “entirely consistent with those outlined in detail in the original contract, which was signed by the county in March 2006.”

The pricing terms were also in pricing requirements defined by the state, she wrote.

“Throughout this process, we have been transparent in sharing information about our warranty pricing structure; all of the pricing terms have remained consistent with what was outlined in the original contract," she wrote.