Case Study: City of Philadelphia achieves real-time, tamper-proof tracking of voting equipment and ballots with Zebra

Philadelphia Department of Elections Adopts RFID To Automate the Tracking of Voting Equipment and Ballot Returns During Elections

The City of Philadelphia Department of Elections, responsible for serving more than a million registered voters, faced slow, paper-based tracking of voting machines, ballots and accessories that created security risks, long lines at returns and heavy police paperwork and oversight. Manual check-ins led to bottlenecks and chain-of-custody concerns that the department needed to resolve before increasingly complex election cycles.

Philadelphia deployed Zebra UHF handheld and fixed RFID readers integrated with InThing’s Voting Equipment Tracking Software (VETS) and related cloud tools, initially in 2020 and scaled in 2021. The system created a tamper-proof, real-time digital chain of custody, enabled rapid audits and automated reconciliation, cleared the return bottleneck, shortened police duties, flagged misplaced items instantly and saved the city hundreds of thousands of dollars per election cycle.

City of Philadelphia

Nick Custodio

Deputy Commissioner