The Election Reform Network presented the dark side of Election Day administration at a meeting of the Montco Board of Commissioners on September 17.  Appropriately enough, it was Constitution Day. 

Five citizen advocates described a series of incidents and practices that occurred last November 4 at the polls across Montgomery County.  We read a legal affidavit from a poll watcher/attorney describing intimidation at the polls and eyewitness testimony to a senseless incident of a legitimate vote being purposely canceled by a judge of elections.  We presented eyewitness testimony of unlawful and unjust policies on provisional and emergency paper ballots and voter ID requirements.

Now, in some cases, these incidents may be isolated ones, reflecting only the misdeeds of a few rogue election officials (a problem in itself), who are, unfortunately, more than willing to override federal and state election laws.  In others, they may reflect more widespread problems, perhaps even the undeclared policies or flagrant errors of the Election Board and/or its implementation arm, the Department of Voter Services.  Either way, our goal is simply to get the problems fixed.   

But here’s the basic dilemma: to make change in the public sphere, problems have to be acknowledged - publicly - and lines of accountability have to be drawn and solutions crafted and executed.  That’s where things can get a little dicey for our local officials, especially when it comes to the hallowed ground of our elections.  Sometimes it’s just easier to go with the flow, so long as the destination is, well, beside the point.

So Constitution Day brought hardly a single expression of acknowledgment or concern – not to mention ideas for improvements – from our elected officials.  Election Board Chairman Joe Hoeffel was quick to note that the county had responded to the Election Reform Network – in a literal sense.  We had a meeting and then sent them a written summary, to which they responded in writing two months later as if the meeting had never taken place.  As for Hoeffel’s two colleagues, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Jim Matthews and Commisioner Bruce Castor, they tend toward stone silence at public meetings on just about anything related to Election Board policies and did not attend our meeting with Hoeffel.
   
In summary, we issued a detailed report on the November, 08 election last March (HYPERLINK), we met with the Election Board Chairman and staff back in May and wrote an immediate follow-up letter outlining our understanding of next steps, which was never contested.  Almost two months later, we received a written response that either contradicted or ignored the facts that we presented then and at last Thursday’s board meeting.  The county’s response either failed to address the issues or got the facts wrong.  Three examples:

1) On emergency ballots, the county never indicated how long it took for officials at two polls to issue paper ballots, but conceded indirectly that it was not done immediately (an unconfirmed report had Upper Dublin 1-1 taking three hours to issue paper ballots, despite the court’s requirement that it be done immediately when 50% or more of the machines are down.  The county never responded, publicly or privately, on the subject of whether it was aware that it was out of compliance with the court order and whether it planned to comply in future elections.

2) We have eyewitness accounts from last November and during the April 08 Primary of county staff specifically telling judges of election, contrary to the law, not to issue provisional ballots when voters were not found on the rolls because “it’s a waste of time” and “they won’t be counted anyway.”  Yet the county sweepingly denies that the problem exists.

3) Regarding our charge of intimidation of a poll watcher, one of two such incidents we logged, the county claims that the watcher had no credentials, however we have a legal affidavit outlining the incident in full, which declares that the watcher was in possession of a watcher certificate.  We urge the county to check the record, which will lead to a confirmation of the incident, as we have outlined it.

In addition, we described last week a November 4 incident in which a voter witnessed the unjustified nullification of a vote by a judge of election in Gilbertsville.  The underlying question in all of these examples is how the citizens of Montgomery County can be assured that such problems will be corrected when the Election Board fails to acknowledge that they even exist.

Unfortunately, elections in Montgomery County are pretty much a microcosm of what occurs across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the nation at large.  Indeed, elections here may be run more smoothly and fairly than many in our state.  Nationally, some four million eligible voters were disenfranchised last November, according to a report from Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project.  HYPERLINK  And hardly a peep from the commercial media.  Now we face the prospect of a single monopoly corporation controlling three-quarters of the national (electronic) vote count.  HYPERLINK To the uninitiated, it probably sounds alarmist, but the challenges to democracy are real and relentless.  It is time that officials at every level start recognizing the complex crisis of election administration that we face in this country.  Citizen advocates are leading the way on finding new approaches to voting technology and voter registration.  When will our local officials and policy makers catch up?  

Locally, we will not let these issues rest.  When even small systemic problems go unaddressed, they fester and voter confidence weakens further.  We will intensify our effort to monitor the training of poll workers and highlight administrative inadequacies.  We are about to launch a comparison study of every precinct’s numbered list of voters with its electronic machine count for last November’s election.  This study, which the county once claimed it does on its own but now says does not exist, should give a clear indication of the level of lost votes experienced as a result of the inadequate user interface of the Sequoia machines operating in Montgomery County.  (As you probably know, they are unauditable, unrecountable “black-box” machines that should be scrapped as soon as possible.)  We also plan to attend the Logic and Analysis testing of the machines in October, when we can further isolate issues related to the user interface.  And we will be calling for the county to finally adhere to the section of the provisional ballot law allowing public observation of the determination of the eligibility of those ballots within seven days after the election.

We’re proud of the monitoring and advocacy role we perform for Montco elections, but we are under no illusions: much more needs to be done at every level.  Keep watch for opportunities to get involved locally, statewide and nationally.