Luzerne County Election Board calls for more notice when problems occur

Luzerne County’s five-citizen election board opened its Nov. 7 general election adjudication Friday morning with a complaint that it was “deprived of its role and rights by the county administration.”

“Decisions that must involve the board are not being referred to the board or even brought to our attention,” said Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams.

Williams said the board learned about a candidate omission error involving a two-year Wyoming Area School Board seat through the media, which is also how it became aware that some Wilkes-Barre voters had initially received incorrect mail ballots and that secrecy envelopes were missing for some voters due to an outside printer error.

“This must stop now,” Williams said.

Outside the adjudication room, county Manager Romilda Crocamo said there is nothing to report to the election board about the Wyoming Area School Board matter at this time because the county law division is still researching the law to present a legal opinion. As part of that legal analysis, the law division also is waiting for the board to finish adjudicating mail and provisional ballots to obtain a final vote tally in that race, Crocamo said.

“When that is known, the information will be reported to both the election board and the public,” Crocamo said.

Williams cited the county home rule charter’s establishment of an election board to provide general supervision over elections and said the county council-adopted administrative code says the election bureau must “accept all complaints of reported irregularities and refer the same to the board.”

Williams made a motion, which was unanimously approved, ordering immediate referral of the Wyoming Area School Board issue to the election board and applying the same requirement for any future irregularities. Alyssa Fusaro, James Mangan, Daniel Schramm and Audrey Serniak also serve on the board.

A short time later, Crocamo entered the adjudication room in the county’s Penn Place Building in downtown Wilkes-Barre and said she was directing her staff to leave, which meant assistant solicitors, several bureau workers and the administrative services division head.

The workers returned two minutes later.

Williams asked if the manager is allowed to remove staff and interrupt the board’s meeting.

County Assistant Solicitor Paula Radick said they are county employees under the supervision of the manager, and a matter had to be very briefly discussed.

Radick twice suggested the board continue with the meeting, and they decided to proceed with their review of flagged mail ballots to determine which can and can’t be tallied after input from assistant solicitors and feedback from two party representatives — county Controller Walter Griffith for Republicans and county Democratic Party Vice Chair Mary Ann Petyak.

In the Wyoming Area race, the election bureau did not notify its Wyoming County counterpart that Nick DeAngelo should be removed from the ballot because he withdrew and that Independents Philip Campenni and Erica Gazda must be added because they filed petitions after the primary to appear on the general election ballot.

Wyoming County has one municipality — Exeter Township — in the Wyoming Area School District.

Based on unofficial results, 210 of 479 registered voters in that township cast ballots Nov. 7. Of those, 141 selected DeAngelo, while 69 did not select anyone in that race.

In Luzerne County, unofficial results to date put Campenni ahead by 274 votes. He received 2,007 votes, compared to 1,733 for Gazda.

Crocamo has said she did not know if a special county-funded election would be needed for Exeter Township in Wyoming County if the vote gap between the two Independent contenders ends up exceeding the number of voters who actually cast ballots in the Wyoming County municipality.

Exeter Township in Luzerne County also falls in the Wyoming Area School District along with the boroughs of Exeter, West Pittston, West Wyoming and Wyoming.

Wilkes-Barre ballots

The county issued new mail ballots to 1,557 city voters in Wards 2 to 8 and 14 to 20 because their initial ballot contained the incorrect city council race for their ward. That problem occurred when data files specifying which ballots these voters were supposed to receive did not correctly synchronize when files were merged, officials said.

The election board was informed Friday approximately 600 original ballots from these wards were returned.

Fusaro said it would be disenfranchisement if the board does not take the time to check if any of these voters — through no fault of their own — failed to cast another ballot. Some may have been out of the area and unaware corrected ballots were issued, she said.

Board members agreed and started painstakingly reviewing the original ballots to see if those voters are on the list of those that cast a corrected mail ballot. Any names remaining must then be checked to see if they cast provisional ballots at the poll.

While votes for city council cannot be accepted if the original incorrect ballot was the only one returned, the board can count selections in other races, board members said.

The board wrapped up the public adjudication around 4 p.m. Friday and will resume at 9 a.m. on Monday.