Luzerne County Election Board chair plans discussion on post-election issues

Two issues that surfaced after Luzerne County’s May 16 primary election will be discussed at the county election board’s next regular meeting in July, board Chairwoman Denise Williams said Tuesday.

The first involves a last-minute scramble before election certifications to pinpoint a cause when the number of voters and cast ballots don’t match up in reconciliation reports prepared by the election bureau, she said. This situation forced the election board to temporarily delay Monday’s certification vote.

The other issue centers on the tallying of write-in votes when voters don’t shade in the adjacent ovals on paper ballots.

Reconciliation

Williams said the ideal solution is for the election bureau to generate the reconciliation report sooner, particularly if the bureau is not going to research and resolve all discrepancies ahead of time.

If the impediment is bureau staffing and resources, the board could work with the administration to see if additional support is available, Williams said.

The bureau presented the primary election reconciliation report to council last Friday, and Williams said she immediately flagged numerous discrepancies that had to be explained and corrected. There was urgency to resolve the matter because Monday was the certification deadline.

By Monday morning, before the scheduled 1 p.m board certification meeting, the board identified the cause of some outstanding flagged issues but decided it would have to delay the vote until 4 p.m. because numbers were not adding up in two Wilkes-Barre wards.

County Election Director Eryn Harvey eventually figured out the problem, saying the tally of voters was incorrectly inflated because the judges of elections in those two wards also added mail ballot voters to their polling place voter count.

Williams said she realized more timely completion of the reconciliation report was necessary after the November 2022 general election, when the board received the initial report on Nov. 23, or five days before the certification deadline, with Thanksgiving falling within that window. The board sought explanations on discrepancies through email at that time, she said.

Board members held in-person, public discussion about the reconciliation after the Jan. 31 state senate special election impacting 18 municipalities, Williams said, noting that was important for transparency.

“It’s still a work in progress,” Williams said of the reconciliation. “It’s an important process — a check and balance between the board and bureau.”

County Manager Romilda Crocamo, who started work May 25, agreed a thorough reconciliation is essential after every election and said Tuesday she will be reaching out to the board to obtain its feedback on both the November 2022 general election and recent primary to identify possible measures to improve the election process.

Crocamo said she also met with bureau leadership and will be reviewing procedures to ensure the county is taking all necessary steps, as soon as possible, to prepare for the November general.

Write-in tally

Williams said she believes the board must fully discuss and approve a procedure on the write-in oval-shading issue going forward.

Harvey has said she already has decided the county should return to using electronic ballot marking devices instead of hand-marked paper ballots at polling places in the November general election. The shading of ovals is only an issue on paper ballots.

But Williams said a proactive decision on the oval shading is still warranted for paper mail ballots.

Based on legal advice, the board had taken the position that voters must both shade in the oval and write a name for a write-in to be accepted.

However, a panel of county judges granted Wilkes-Barre Councilman Tony Brooks’ emergency petition, which argued the county should process all write-in votes in his race, regardless of whether the ovals are shaded.

Brooks’ petition said state law prior to March 26, 2020 would have required voters to both mark the write-in selection and name of the candidate in jurisdictions with electronic voting systems that use paper ballots to register the votes.

But the law was amended after that date to eliminate the requirement that a voter “mark” a write-in candidate, specifying that voters can “indicate” their intent to select a write-in by inserting the name of the person, it said. Voters showed this indication when they expressly declined to select a named candidate on the ballot and instead wrote in the name of their choice, it said.

The panel of judges — Tina Polachek Gartley, Tarah Toohil and Stefanie Salavantis — agreed with the interpretation presented by Brooks.

Williams said she will schedule a discussion on both matters at the July 12 election board meeting at the county courthouse on River Street in Wilkes-Barre.