Speckin deduced that this could be caused by a defect in that particular scanner if it weren’t for a number of ballot images captured by the scanner that had no issues in the quality of the image or the repeatable defects.
The number of ballots that contain this visible defect is greater than 10,000, according to Speckin’s report. Speckin, who has almost three decades of experience analyzing documents forensically, stated his professional opinion is that there needs to be a further review of the 700,000 ballots cast in Allegheny Co to determine what significance these findings have on the whole. Speckin recommends examining the specific tabulator to determine the user of the tabulator, time frames of the scanning, and the cause of the poor images.