Trust in our elections.

It's the foundation of democracy.

What happens after we cast our ballots?

How can we recognize misinformation and assure that the process is fair, secure and accurate?

The night will explore that in a community conversation.

Trust in our elections.

From the Universal Public Media Center in Bethlehem, PA, please welcome the executive director of Keep Our Republic, Ari Middleman.

Well, thanks to everyone for taking the time.

I also want to thank our panelists, two of whom drove from some distance, George Jones from Carlisle and Mike McDonald from from Harrisburg.

But really, I want to thank each of you for taking the time.

Today is 180 days until Election Day, and I think I'm going to make a prediction.

It's not going be on the horserace.

We're not going to talk about the horse race tonight.

I'm going to make a prediction that there's going to be a collective sigh of relief in Northampton County.

There's going to be one or $2 that are spent over the next hundred 80 days by the campaigns.

You're not going to turn on your television.

York will open up your front door.

Probably even your email inbox is.

This is ground zero.

This is Purple America.

As folks know, keep our Republic as ac3 nonprofit.

We don't have a dog in the fight.

We do care deeply about demystifying and helping folks like yourselves understand everything that goes into election administration, nuts and bolts, including the legal elements of it.

You know, increasingly we're hearing the interplay with the court system.

What you're doing tonight is a conversation that similar to what happened just last Tuesday outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Next week, we're going to be an hour south of Pittsburgh in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.

Simultaneously, we're going to be in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

So our nonprofit is doing this in communities like this to have conversations at the community level.

I'm sure some of you have questions about what happens in Philadelphia.

You might have questions what happened in Detroit, Michigan and places like this.

Tonight, we're here to talk about Northampton County, Pennsylvania, and the broader commonwealth.

So really look forward to the conversation.

I look forward to learning a lot, and I'm sure you do, too.

Great.

Thank you, Ari.

Once again, welcome, everyone, to the Universe Public Media Center in Bethlehem on the PBS 39 Lehigh Valley News.com and 91.3 w lv r Radio.

In six months, voters will cast ballots in a presidential election that will determine the nation's course for the next four years, as it has before.

Northampton County stands to draw considerable attention as a bellwether county and a key swing state.

It's a microcosm of Pennsylvania, NPR politics.

But as this historic election gets closer across America, there is a crisis of trust.

A Gallup study last year found that only 47% of Americans trust the accuracy and integrity of elections.

Complete or a lot.

A survey of Pennsylvania voters just released by the Institute of Public Opinion at Muhlenberg College found further trouble with voter confidence.

Four in ten people are not too confident or not confident at all.

Joe Biden got the most votes in Pennsylvania in 2020.

It also found a significant number of people.

Again, more than 40% doubt the election was conducted fairly.

Many voters have little information about how our election process works, and misinformation has played a significant part in eroding the public's trust in democracy.

That makes it more important than ever that voters have the facts about the process and the measures in place to conduct fair, secure and accurate elections.

That is why we are here tonight.

We'll hear from experts at the local, state and federal levels.

The goal is to answer your questions, have a thoughtful discussion, and shed light on how Northampton County prepares and runs its elections.

A quick note.

Our audience members were asked to write their questions on cards.

We'll be collecting the rest of them from you in a few minutes.

Let's meet our guests.

Lamont McClure became Northampton County executive in 2018.

His Department of Administration oversees the elections office and all countywide elections.

A lifelong Pennsylvanian who previously served on county council, he is in his second term as the county's top elected leader.

Michael McDonald is director of policy for the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees voting and elections and the Commonwealth's electoral process.

He manages the department's regulatory development process and provides analysis and recommendations on key issues that affect elections.

The Honorable John E Owens.

The third is retired, is a retired chief judge of the US Middle District Court of Pennsylvania.

He was nominated to the federal bench by President George W Bush.

Before that, he was a lawyer in private practice in his hometown of Pottsville in School County.

In 2022, he was named the 30th president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, P.A., a post he still holds today.

Christopher Bourque is well known in the Lehigh Valley.

He's a professor of political science and director of the previously mentioned Institute of Public Opinion at Muhlenberg College.

He is a nationally recognized public opinion researcher whose analysis and expertise on Northampton County, along with his fresh survey of PA voters, make him a great person to kick things off tonight.

So, Professor Borick, I want to start with you and the research that you've conducted in the past few years on people's views on our elections and the election process.

Why has that been a focus and what have you been hearing from Pennsylvanians?

Yeah, as you mentioned, Tom, the importance of trust in a democracy is essential for a healthy democracy.

If voters don't trust the systems, the processes that operate within a democracy, it undermines the whole broader nation as a whole.

And that's been an issue that, of course, has been salient to us.

Anybody that lived through election year 2020 can recognize that this issue has risen in terms of importance in American discussions, American politics and American democracy, as a whole.

And so from an institute perspective, we wanted to do spend time looking at where Pennsylvanians are with their trust of the system.

Election outcomes accurate see of elections, anything we could do to measure.

I'm a political scientist, public opinion researcher.

I research what the public believes and thinks.

That doesn't mean what the public believes and thinks is always supported by factual evidence.

But nonetheless, what the public believes really guides the health and well-being of any democratic system.

What does your research showing about the confidence in elections?

Do we have any insights as to the reasons or factors behind what those findings are?

The numbers that you described earlier, Tom, about the percentage of Pennsylvanians we ask in a different number of different forms what people think their trust in outcomes, their trust in processes like mail ballots, which have become a big issue in Pennsylvania.

We ask regularly how confident you are in those things, and we wanted to see how that's changing over time.

And as you referenced, our most recent survey that just released today or yesterday looks at where Pennsylvanians are right now.

And we see continued levels of doubt in a number of the key mechanisms like mail ballots and also in past outcomes of elections.

And you ask the key question why?

Why is that the case?

Well, that's a complex answer, as you can guess.

But a lot of it as a political science gets back to messaging that individuals receive from elected officials, we call them, that's a really geeky term partizan cues or elite cues that cues are given by individuals to try and educate folks.

If a lot of that messaging that's coming from elected officials questions the validity questions that the underlying honesty and integrity of elections, it can raise concerns now could could sometimes raising concerns be a good thing to make sure democracy is is healthy and and fair?

Of course, can it also be generated in ways that raise suspicions without factual evidence that's not supported through court cases or others?

The answer to that is also yes, and that's trying to figure that out.

And where we are on those things, I think is really important from an academic and a research perspective.

So Executive McLure Just yesterday, the North Henry County Election Commission certified the results from last month's primary election.

How did the county fare?

Very well, because we always put on legal, fair and accurate elections, even in cycles where we've had some glitches with the IRS and our system that we use in Northampton County, those elections were legal, fair and accurate.

And how do we know that what won?

Because the machine we use has several layers of redundancy.

So when the state audit is conducted, it demonstrates that the voter's intent, as it was cast on Election Day or through their mail in ballot, was actually cast and counted properly.

And the further evidence that we know legal, fair and accurate elections are put on in Northampton County is that no lawsuits were filed.

And B, Judge Jones may talk about the 2020 lawsuits.

I think some 63 were filed by the Trump campaign alone and they lost 62.

I would actually argue that that's the proper way to challenge an election.

Now, whether those lawsuits, 62 of them had merit, various courts have determined, many of them did not.

But I think that that is the proper mechanism for challenging an election and no election.

Since I've been county executive in Northampton County has faced any legal actions.

That's because we do it the right way, even when there's problems.

One of the things I'd like to message this, this primary election went very well.

It was uneventful.

People should take take solace in that.

But I want to talk about November four times as many people are going to show up in November.

Elections are human endeavors and nothing humans ever do is 100% perfect.

There will be problems in November.

There will be.

But at the end of the day, people can trust that their lawfully cast ballots will be counted accurately.

And the election in Northampton County, which is all I can speak for, will be fair.

So if this bellwether, the votes come in on election night, you will see that the voters intent was realized.

And glad to hear that.

I want to shift focus a little bit.

You referenced some glitches that have occurred in past years.

I know that we have received questions from members of the audience and others about that.

Can you talk to us about those glitches and how has the situation been cleaned up since then?

So the first time was 2019, when we had first taken delivery from S.A., the vendor, and they had some problems in their factory in Omaha.

Those were quickly resolved and moving forward.

We didn't have those issues again.

Those were screen issues and calibration issues, and they've been taken care of and we have not seen those again.

And even in that election where there were difficulties, we had the redundancy in the system to know who's voter intent was their vote was cast for that.

It was counted properly and it was a legal, fair and accurate election.

And we know that because no lawsuits were filed, if any candidates felt aggrieved by that particular glitch in that particular year, they would have filed a lawsuit.

But they did it.

That's how we know what happened.

There was legal, fair and accurate.

The most recent issue we had was a essentially a typographical error made by an employee of S.A., our vendor in Omaha, in the middle of the night after our ballot went back and forth 17 times between our voter registration division and Omaha.

And that's to get it right.

And it was a small error, a error in the Superior Court retention race.

And what happened was the person just put the wrong name on the wrong line.

And so when you printed out your ballot, it the wrong name appeared.

But the vote that you cast on the screen was actually cast on the card, even though the name was incorrect because the barcode matched what the voter pressed on the screen and which was uploaded to the USB stick.

That also gets turned on at night.

So there's a tremendous amount of redundancy in that that s and as our vendor has fixed that problem.

We did not have that problem in the spring.

We will not have that problem in the fall.

I want to talk to you about a recent report from Spotlight, P.A..

They review the county's 2023 election documents and found that there were over 150 from the logic and accuracy testing of the voting machines that were missing.

Hundreds of others were incomplete.

For those who don't know, these documents are supposed to help show that the county followed the proper procedures and that the machines were thoroughly prepared and tested before the election.

Why were these not prepared or completed?

And what has the county done to correct that problem?

Well, I don't think that's entirely accurate.

I think that when we received that reporting, we went back, we had our elections.

Chief Chris community go back and look at that and far fewer errors than the reporter originally discovered actually occurred.

But what happened was at the end of the learning process, they just they scrambled to get everything collected and they put them in boxes and they didn't organize them well or properly.

We put an end to that.

Everything now is organized properly and is in the box that corresponds with the work that was done.

I have to tell you, though, it's a bit of a red herring because the Lennay problem would not have been discovered by having a tape in your hand that was associated with that machine because and in their LNA testing didn't allow for the retention races and to vote yes on one retention candidate and no one the other.

They're testing didn't allow for it.

So nothing in those tapes, in those disorganized boxes which we have addressed with our staff and won't happen going forward, would have altered what happened on Election Day.

So I understand that the sloppy recordkeeping that the folks had had performed previously is potentially problematic, but it wasn't problematic in that instance.

And we're not going to do it in the future.

So I don't think we necessarily should be focused on, you know, a mess in a box that had nothing to do with the ultimate outcome, especially since we know the glitch couldn't have been caught in the lab testing that is, and has had at the time, and that it worked on.

Ultimately when we figured out what it was that happened, that the votes were properly cast for Judge Bonilla, they were properly cast for judges to be ale, they were counted and they were accurate.

And either those guys been aggrieved, they would have filed lawsuits.

Mr. McDonald While the state sets the election standards of the counties and their officials need to follow through on, it's up to the counties themselves to, to perform that work.

That means that system, that means that elections are run slightly differently across the state.

Why is the system set up that way?

And does this create any potential challenges?

I think ultimately it's because counties know their voters best.

I think the people who work in county election offices live in that county know the people of that county and know the types of procedures and processes that may be necessary for to make it as easy as possible for the voters there to be able to get the information they need and cast their ballot.

The Department of State, as you mentioned, works hard.

We have really good relationships with all the counties across the Commonwealth.

We develop guidance to try to guide counties on best practices.

If there are issues that one county or a couple of counties are seeing, we'll reach out to our contacts in other counties to make sure that those issues are being replicated.

And so the system is set up, I think, to make sure that the people who know their voters best are the ones that are going to be in charge of running the elections.

And the state is there to provide resources and to serve as a backdrop to make sure that things are running smoothly and to help out in any way we can.

And Tom, if I might.

Sure.

I think it's important and maybe the judge can address this better or the professor.

We are a commonwealth and our Constitution.

The Pennsylvania Constitution does devolve a great deal of power down to the local levels.

It's why, for example, your zoning decisions are made by your borough or your township.

It's a tremendous amount of power to decide that.

It's why we have 67 different election systems in Pennsylvania, because we are a commonwealth to defend the Department of State.

They can't dictate to any particular county how they're going to run their election now.

You know, potentially the legislature could and that might be a subject of litigation to, I imagine the counties would push back on that.

But that's part of why it's so difficult to administer elections in the Commonwealth.

Can I just add one quick thing that goes along with this from public public opinion perspective, when we ask questions of trust and where there is the greatest trust, it is with local government.

It is at the county level.

It's with those precinct workers where you see the greatest trust from the public in the broader system.

That's interesting.

Thank you.

On that note, I want to follow Mr. McDonald on this.

This is a question from an audience member from Orfield.

Some counties allow notice and cures for flawed mail in ballots, while others will discount a vote entirely.

Do you think legislation is required to bring all 67 counties into a more consistent approach?

Well, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has interpreted the Pennsylvania election code as is their duty and their job, and they determined that the election code allows but does not require counties to notify their voters if they have a technical error on their mail ballot package and to give them an opportunity to fix that.

So, yes, if the legislator wanted to, it could prescribe that counties, all counties need to implement a process to, quote, notice and care process.

But right now, it's the law of the Commonwealth that that is for the discretion of county election officials to determine again how to best meet the needs of their voters.

Does the State Department have any recommendations on what counties should do in that regard, or is it leave it to leave it to the devices of those officials?

We want to work with counties to provide them the resources they need to implement the processes that they've decided are best for their voters.

We want elections, and elections are open and accessible.

We want it to be easy for eligible voters to be able to cast their ballots and to make sure they have those ballots count.

But again, our number one job is to follow the law and to assist counties in doing that and providing those services for their voters.

Judge Jones, the federal courts have confirmed that decentralized county system, as we were just talking about, and that's above board and in line with the Constitution.

Can you explain that?

But legal thought process and how it's played out in Pennsylvania?

Well.

What I want to say first, Tom, is that to to my colleague's point, the practical problem in Pennsylvania, and I'm not pointing fingers at any one person, is that we passed an act several years ago, Act 77.

And that act allowed no excuse mail in balloting, which I'm sure a lot of people take advantage of.

There are things that need to be fixed in that act.

You named something.

You know, we have uncertainty.

And in fact, there have been lawsuits based on the fact that some counties have allowed, for example, drop boxes, others not.

Some have allowed ballot carrying, others have not.

In fact, a lawsuit that was in my district by federal court district before my colleague, Judge Brand, in 2020 that was filed by Donald Trump, had to do with the fact that Lancaster County was allowing certain things that other counties weren't, and it was lodged under certain constitutional provisions.

That suit was without merit.

We can discuss that.

It's one of the 60 plus suits that happened nationally.

Courts are very reluctant to wade into disputes where there's really no constitutional question at stake.

There's another aspect in Pennsylvania, by the way, as well that needs to be fixed.

And that's my view is pre canvasing.

And for your audience, you know, pre canvasing simply means you start to count votes before Election Day in Pennsylvania.

You cannot begin to count mail in ballots, which now they're happening in an overwhelming number.

You can't count them until election Day.

There is legislation that has been proposed that would allow pre canvasing or counting of the mail in votes a week ahead.

Now, you get objections to that because people say, well, you shouldn't count them because the results will leak out.

We're one of a few states that doesn't allow pre canvasing and they don't have that problem.

Then there are ways to fix that problem.

The problem in Harrisburg is everything's a bargaining chip.

And so it right now to get pre canvasing the the sort of corollary ask is that there has to be voter ID and so you you have parties that at loggerhead.

Meanwhile there's uncertainty.

So from the federal court's perspective, I can tell you from experience, judges don't like election disputes.

They they want to pass that.

CUPP You know, when they happen, you have to be decided rapidly.

They're very contentious and the law is less than clear.

And in Pennsylvania, give you a quick example.

And this isn't a straight up dispute or a contested election, but it is something that is emblematic of the flaws in the law.

We have a provision that allows recounts in Pennsylvania.

Now.

There's an automatic recount.

If it's 0.05% difference, you get an automatic recount.

Otherwise, you can ask for a recount.

There are patchwork decisions all over the commonwealth, and these are well-intentioned county judges who don't have a lot of guidance from a law that dates back, you know, almost 100 years and has not been fixed.

And so some judges say there has to be an allegation of fraud and some evidence of fraud to get a recount.

There's not.

We have what I would describe as after 2020 performative recounts where someone gets slaughtered in an election and others come in and just to prove a point that they think a recount is going to show flaws in the system, actually they haven't at all.

They've they've showed the integrity of the system and the viability of of whatever a county happens to be using as their method for law, for logging and counting votes.

So there you know, there is a public policy issue here.

And I think courts get frustrated because they're saying fix this stuff, you know, so it doesn't become the basis for a lawsuit and there's a lack of will to close it up.

Final point, it goes to what Chris said.

You know, he's talking about cues and that's a great phrase, I call it.

And this is not I didn't coin this phrase, but it's illusory truth and illusory truth is a concept where if somebody says something over and over and over again, it takes on the cast of truth, even though it's demonstrably untrue.

We're dealing with a lot of illusory truths today where you get this echo chamber and things keep getting repeated and repeated and repeated by otherwise responsible people and I think that's one of the problems with with the narrative about about elections really starting in 2020.

Can I clarify one thing, please, Tom And Judge, I'm not trying to nitpick, but it's a really crucial point that I want to make sure people understand about pre canvasing because there is legislation out there about it now.

And it's it is a reform that the Department of State has long advocated for.

The Secretary Schmidt has an account is the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania.

I.

Believe that.

I have no quarrel with that.

I'm quite sure Secretary Schmidt, who's a great guy, he's the kind of progressive guy that would be for it.

I'm not talking about the Department of State.

I'm not talking about the county commissioners.

I'm talking about the General Assembly of Pennsylvania.

What and what's important to realize about pre canvasing is that it's not actually it wouldn't actually enable counties to count votes before election Day.

It only would allow counties to begin the process to essentially begin canvasing the ballot, which is the process of taking the envelope, opening the envelope, removing the inner inner ballot.

Maybe you need to smooth it out, scanned it into a machine.

Everything you have to do leading up to counting the vote and it's those seemingly little things that when you're dealing with thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds, hundreds of thousands of ballots, if counties cannot start going through that process until the morning of Election Day, that's when it really delays the system, the delays reporting.

About all the canvasing.

I want to make a point about preeclampsia.

Sure.

It's incredibly important if you are a voter who's sitting at home on election night and you want the answer on election night the way you used to get when we had those old £300 green monsters, which, by the way, were highly susceptible to corruption.

If you want to talk about corruption, you want pre canvasing.

I believe the Pennsylvania House of Representatives has approved a bill for seven days of canvasing.

I'm certain Governor SHAPIRO would sign it.

So it's our state Senate that needs to act to give us pre canvasing because if you want to know on election night, we need pre canvasing.

We do a great job.

You'll get most of our votes on election by about midnight or 1:00.

You'll get most of our mail in ballots.

But that's not true of larger counties like Philadelphia.

And you know, the other point about pre canvasing is this.

And when we talk about this narrative in elections, so, you know, you have Philadelphia, which gets inundated with no excuse, mail in ballots.

There is no way under the current regime that it can possibly count all the votes that come in if they start on Election Day.

Therefore, the vote totals in the Commonwealth, aided by a lot of votes in Philly and in some other metropolitan areas in Pennsylvania, are going to change.

They did in 2020.

And then, you know, if you want to create a narrative, you can say, see those vote totals changed over time.

So there must be something nefarious that's going on with the election when in fact, it's just the inability to count those notes cuz mail in ballots.

So, you know it was a wonderful thing that the my view that the that the General Assembly allowed no excuse mail in voting and got with the program.

But you know a couple of years down the road now you've got to see how it works and apply some fixes to it so that you you you uphold the integrity of the process and have some transparency in terms of what you do.

I really appreciate this conversation.

We're hitting a lot of topics.

You're making my job very difficult because I have a lot You've discussed about a dozen subjects.

So there's a lot of good ways to jump off.

But I think I'm going to do it with an audience question.

A question with the audience.

Is there any good reason not to process the mail in ballots or be the mean pre canvasing tool before prior to Election Day?

I think I heard it and I'll defer to the judge on this, but I think the argument as well could if for some reason that information was leaked in the process, even though you made a strong case, there's nothing really to leak at that time if it's just being pre set and ready to go.

I hate to say it, but there is it's politics right?

And there's politics and there are advantages in terms of strategy and cases to be made politically by having that uncertainty.

And I think, you know, this is a discussion about certainty and confidence in elections from a strategic perspective.

For some individuals in politics right now, uncertainty is a good thing.

And you could make your case.

And if that is what your goal is, if that's what you seek, that system allows it.

But I find it hard.

And I you know, I spent my life as a political scientist trying to make the case for various perspectives.

There's a hard case to make.

The judge talks about horse trading in politics, and that's part of the reality of politics.

But the idea that we're going to delay this only adds uncertainty.

Uncertainty breeds distrust, especially in this climate.

And I think for some that might not be.

That might be a goal and insights.

Well, no, I couldn't I couldn't agree more.

I mean, I think that's spot on.

And what people want.

Well, you know, for election watchers, that's a lot of us who want to see results and definitive results on that Tuesday evening as engaged citizens.

You're not going to get them because you're not going to know the ballots aren't going to get counted until later.

So you'll go to bed unless you're an insomniac, you know, And even then you better stay for a couple of days.

Or made the foolish mistake of getting into political journalism.

That's right.

That's right.

That's right.

But, you know.

Well, good luck with the caffeine, you know, because you just won't know the results.

And, you know, so again, it's a wonderful thing that we're progressive in areas like no excuse mail in voting.

But you know, let's not stop there.

You know, there there will be, in most of our lifetimes, some means of electronic voting, you know, other than mail in ballots.

And let's face it, I mean, it's going to come.

I don't think the technology is there.

It's not advanced.

You know, we don't we don't yet trust mail in voting.

So I would why would we trust electronic voting?

But but, you know, in a generation hence that's what's going to happen.

Some people love to go to polling places.

That's great and do that old habits and they enjoy it and they enjoy interacting with people and that's fine.

But that's going to become less and less the norm in voting.

It's just the way it is.

So another audience question kind of on this subject from, of course, township residents.

I would like someone to explain the difference between me dropping off my family's mail in ballots, mail in ballots in the ballot box, which is illegal, versus putting stamps on them and dropping them off in my mailbox.

I got it.

Okay.

That's what the statute says.

That's what the legislature said.

That's the law.

It's that simple.

Now, you can intuit what the motivation was behind that provision in the statute.

The positive case for that provision in the statute is you don't want people going around doing what they call harvesting mail in ballots.

That's not a terrific concern of mine, because that would be so logistically difficult to go around it harvesting and improperly voting individual voters.

It it's not a conspiracy, but it's close to one.

Right.

But the other the other reason is simply they don't want the drop boxes used to their maximum effectiveness.

That's the reason.

And in my view, that's my view.

Another audience question What kind of training has the county provided election and poll workers for the people who are the people who are manning these polling places?

We were just discussing.

What kind of training.

Yeah.

There's a binder this thick and our our elections registrar Chris Khamenei spends most of his days leading up to elections training our judges of the election and our poll workers.

And our training is mandatory if you're a judge of elections in Northampton County, you must attend the training.

Is that.

New?

After last year?

So historically had has not been mandatory, but it is now mandatory.

So all of our poll workers and our judges of elections get extensive training on all aspects of Alexi, because you're talking about people like to vote in person.

We have 154 precincts.

They're all well staffed.

We have our machines in all of them.

I want to make sure that people who vote on Election Day, who want that experience, who want to cast that vote, are confident that their vote is being properly cast and when it's counted, counted in the way they intended.

So we work actually very hard to make sure our election Day experience.

I would say we work twice or three times as hard to make sure the Election Day experience for our voter is excellent compared to what we do with our mail in balloting.

And the mail in voting is labor intensive.

We had 40 people opening and flattening and scanning at three shifts.

I've seen it.

Yeah, it's an it's an operation.

And just to follow up on that, what are the type of things that go into the training?

Like where are the things that are discussed that they are?

But what, what on God's blue earth could fill up a binder that big on an election.

Stuff, just how to use it.

Right.

One of the one of the beautiful things about the Senate system is how handicapped accessible it is.

But you have to train a judge or particularly a poll worker and how those how those accessories to make that machine accessible to the handicapped are used.

If you have macular degeneration, we have a screen that you can see that screen, that kind of thing.

So that kind of training goes in basic sort of troubleshooting.

I had trouble starting mine up, you know, unplug it, plug it back in, that kind of thing.

How to put the paper in, you know, all of those things go into the training.

Each county gets to make their own decision about what type of voting system they're going to have.

What went into the decision to get this specific model of this specific type and who made that decision?

And what like what were the pros and cons of that process?

So that decision was made by our previous director of administration who took the lead on bringing the system to us.

And and one of the things that it appealed and our previous registrar, they together were instrumental in bringing the system.

And one of the things that appealed to me about the system was its accessibility to handicapped voters, because lots and lots of handicapped voters remember, this was pre mail in balloting, did not have true access to polling places because the machine wasn't accessible.

The other thing that I really liked about the machine and I think our previous registrar and director of administration liked about it, was the redundancy in the system.

You when you have a vote cast in that system, we're going to be able to prove in court should it ever be challenged in court, what happened.

Those are the two.

Those are the two.

I think those are the two features that really attracted them to this system.

And if I recall correctly, the model that we have here in North Hanover County is actually one of the more expensive ones that was approved.

Someone once described it as the Cadillac.

I think I don't think I don't think that's right.

I think that's sort of it was sort of mid-market.

Yeah, I don't think it was.

Your counterpart in Lehigh County did describe it as the Cadillac of voting machines.

Yeah.

Well, I guess the question is where where else is this model used?

Like whether counties what other counties are using more than two counties machines.

So you may have heard of it.

Philadelphia County, where a judge is president of the college, Cumberland County.

They use them.

Those are the two county other counties in Pennsylvania that I'm aware that use the same machine we do.

Okay.

Thank you.

By the way, Lehigh County has an SS system.

They have not the same type of it is.

And yes, they do use the same.

Yes, they use the same.

Vendor wasn't trying to suggest otherwise.

Mr. McDonald.

We've gone over public opinion of how the county is working to correct some of the problems that have popped up in the past.

What is the state doing to restore trust in the election system?

Well, first, I want to reiterate something that Executive McClure said early in this conversation, and that is that elections in Pennsylvania and Northampton County and elsewhere in the Commonwealth, they are open and accessible.

They are free and fair and they are safe and secure.

The integrity of our system is strong in Pennsylvania and we are not blind to the lack of confidence that some voters have in our elections.

But we really want to get the message out that elections run well.

They run smoothly and they run accurately, thanks in large part to the dedication of our our county election officials and workers.

But the best way to restore confidence in elections is to run good elections and to be transparent about what you're doing.

And we think we've been doing that.

We think that this past primary went very smoothly.

Again, not only in Northampton County, but elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

Very few issues only only issues that crop up every election, some polling place where it was open late because some guys slipped in with the keys or, you know, little minor things that, you know, any inconvenience is important to overcome.

But by and large, voters are able to cast their votes with ease and those votes are counted accurately.

The count is still certifications, it's still pending, but all signs pointing are pointing to it being an accurate election.

And so we've been implementing procedures to make voting more accessible, to make the process as we've used here in Pennsylvania, more transparent and to provide the counties with more resources so that they can do the big jobs that they have in front of them.

One thing I want to tout is our communications team launched a public education initiative, and I would encourage everyone to go to vote dot gov and use that as their number one source for information on voting in the Commonwealth.

Number one, I should say maybe aside from the county election office, which will always have the most localized information for you, but we realize it's important not only to present accurate information to voters, but to try to educate voters that the Department of State and other similar governmental entities are should be their trusted source for accurate information.

So it's as much about learning where to look for the answers to questions you have, as much as it is actually providing those answers and providing that information.

So we've been doing campaigns around the State Department staff have gone out to county fairs.

We've done events like this, which we think are really beneficial.

And we've also developed some materials and resources that voters can rely upon to get accurate information about how to vote, how to register, where to vote and all the rest.

And if I can just jump in, Tom, on top of that, I think the Department of State does a terrific job.

And under the leadership of Secretary Schmidt, keep our republic is what I'm representing on this panel tonight is, as Ari said at the beginning, it's a it's a basically a group of bipartisan and former U.S. senators, former congressman, former federal judges and governor, governors and Governor Corbett, former former governors as well.

And what we want to do is make sure that we can augment efforts like the Department of State and talk about things as we've done in Northampton County and other counties with the great, great cooperation of Vermont and others.

We want to encourage things like tabletop exercises.

By that I mean, you know, if it can go wrong, it may go wrong.

At an election, for example, we have a very dark sort of peril that attends elections now, and it's called deep fakes.

And some of you have heard about deep fakes where, you know, AI is used artificial intelligence to mimic somebody's voice.

You know, that Joe Biden's voice was used, President Biden, in the in the primary recently, I think in the in the New Hampshire primary.

We think that you're going to see deep fakes.

And an example of that is you may get a call.

It may not be a video necessarily, but you could get a call as a voter.

And this is the kind of mischief that can be made.

And and the voice on the phone will tell you that your polling place is closed, but you'll be able to vote tomorrow.

Of course, that's bogus.

It's meant to suppress the vote.

We want counties and they're doing this.

And I know it's being done here in Northampton County to to provide a clear way for voters to understand what's taking place, a repository of information so that this kind of mischief that might attend an election is taken care of.

Or, for example, if there is a legitimate problem such as, God forbid, an active shooter near a polling place, there has to be a way to to move that polling place seamlessly so voters are not distant, franchised, and it extends into county courts.

County courts are where the rubber hits the road, in case, you know, and this is kind of inside baseball, but it's important if a problem comes up on Election Day in any of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania, it goes to a judge who's on duty or judges in that particular county.

It's usually pretty sleepy business.

I mean, and the judge, you two years ago would sit and do crossword puzzles waiting for a problem.

Today, they're on alert because there are plenty of problems that come in to the judges.

So the tabletop exercises need to include how you interface quickly with the court solicitors and the county level.

All those things will ensure that that everybody has the chance to vote and that the election is conducted in an unimpeded way.

And I have to say this.

You know, one of the things we learned, you know, whatever side of debate you're on and as as Ari said, this is not a partizan panel.

It's not meant to be.

But whatever side you're on, you know that the public debate has become infected with either violence or threats of violence.

And and we want to make sure that everybody is ready in case there are any threats that impede this election in the fall.

Judge, you mentioned how it's often sleepy affairs judges are the ones sitting on standby to answer these questions.

As things have become more partizan, as they've become a little more sharp, the courts and judges have found themselves under greater scrutiny and people asking more questions.

How confident should citizens be that judges will handle election disputes in fair and nonpartisan ways?

Oftentimes when they're elected officials or they're appointed by elected officials.

They should be utterly confident.

I'll tell you a quick story.

You know, in the the famous Trump versus Boockvar case that arose in my judicial district where I was chief judge in one of my last years in the bench, that case laid it at the on the docket of Judge Matthew Brann, a colleague of mine.

Judge Brann is a rib rocked by his history.

A Republican, a card carrying member of the Federalist Society.

And, you know, I believe that there was a little bit of forum shopping that was involved in that and they they kind of cherry picked his particular part of the district.

Very foolish because Judge Brann called it straight up.

Rudy Giuliani argued in front of him, frankly, didn't acquit himself well at all.

And at the end of the day, it was a completely baseless case.

And that to me is is really representative of the integrity of the judiciary.

I don't know of any judge that decided any election matter.

And I mean this very truthfully.

I'm off the bench and I'm not trying to do a full throated defense of the judiciary.

Sometimes judges get it wrong, but they take these cases sincerely and decide them according to the law.

And the facts.

As I said earlier, they don't love them because they are contentious cases and you can't win if you're a judge.

Definitionally, when I divided, when I decided a case, half the people were upset with me.

But you get a whole political party that's upset with you, you know, depending on how you how you decide a case in a in a in a in a particular election.

And and it you know, it's pretty thankless work.

But the the judiciary will be ready.

And one thing I want to mention to and we didn't touch on this there's probably not time but just to note the Electoral Count reform Act that was passed in 2022 for the audience, it does a couple of things that are really noteworthy.

You will not see because of the way the law is these alternate slates of electors.

There will be one slate of electors that will be certified by the chief executive or his or her designee in every state.

So you're not going to get stand by electors and you're not going to get this concept of a failed election besides that.

And if a state can't get its act together and certify who the electors are, because there's some kind of underlying problem, the federal courts are now empowered through that legislation to step in and make the call essentially and streamline the process and to do it on an emergent basis.

Final thing about the Electoral Count Reform Act is there'll be no more vice president being important to change the results of the election.

His role is now under the Electoral Count Reform Act, strictly ministerial meaning, you know, he's up there to just receive the information and and carry out his duty not to make a judgment call.

And.

Professor Borick, you've done some research into people's opinions about these.

Has that law was passed at the end of 2020 to a bipartisan measure.

Has.

Have you seen the needle move on these things at all?

As people, as Congress and states and communities have tried to do?

It's a great question, Tom.

And there's been some modest movement.

We talked about this with our latest poll.

First of all, it's hard once trust is eroded to rebuild trust, it's a difficult, difficult thing.

And I don't envy any of my colleagues at the county level or the state level or groups like keep our republic to try and do that.

It's a it's a big lift.

It's a very big lift.

But we have seen some signs and it's interesting where we're seeing those signs are sprouts, if you will.

Mail ballots, for example, which we spent quite a bit of time talking about.

Our latest poll shows that since 2021, the last time we looked at this, the level of confidence is slightly increased in that.

And you might say, well, why is that happening?

Part of it's politics.

Republican leaders, Republican strategist, have recognized that demonizing this method when it is a legal part of the process probably isn't good politics.

So there was a lot of messaging over the last year to say, hey, this is safe, this is okay.

You could do that.

And we've noticed a little bit of uptick there.

Now that might be borne out of strategy rather than a, you know, a good common good to increase security or confidence in elections.

Nonetheless, you could see a little bit of movement on that.

But back to my key point, it is really hard to rebuild confidence when it's eroded and especially if it's eroded on reasons that perhaps aren't all that substantiated in the first place.

Only in Pennsylvania would you see a law passed and some of the people who voted for the law turn around a year or two later and try to have that same law declared unconstitutional.

And as Chris said, there was this o moment where the policymakers understood that people actually like the convenience of those mail in voting so that, you know, that's by the board.

It's accepted now that, you know, it's actually popular and doing what it was supposed to do.

Well, if I if I could share something else, speaking of restoring confidence and mail in balloting.

One example, I think, of the steps that we're taking at the department to try to shore up voters confidence in the process are relates to the initiative we undertook last fall to redesign the mail ballot packages in Pennsylvania.

The secretary prescribed new designs for the envelopes that voters have to fill out when they return their mail ballots.

And there were two two main goals with that.

One was to make the mail ballot materials more uniform across Pennsylvania so that would aid and facilitate voter education efforts.

So as someone voting, you know, in Northampton County could call their grandmother in Lehigh County and know that she was probably looking at probably about the same thing when she was filling out her ballot if they needed to help answer any questions.

And the second thing was to try to minimize the likelihood that voters are going to make the kind of technical, I would argue, minor errors that may result under the law getting their ballots cast out.

So we try to make the instructions on the ballots clearer and we try to redesign using an expert design for the ballots so that it was less likely that the voter is going to forget to date it, put the incorrect date, forget their signature, or forget to put the ballot inside the inner secrecy envelope.

And just today, we were actually able to announce our we're really excited about it, that crunching the numbers, comparing mail ballots canceled by counties for this past primary.

And we're still that certificate hasn't happened.

So we have to put the disclaimer that all numbers and reports about turnout in the lake are unofficial until finally certified by the secretary, which should happen.

And later this month.

But comparing this primary to last year's primary, we saw a 13.5% reduction in ballots canceled for the kinds of reasons we sought to address in the mail ballot redesign.

And 13% is a significant maybe it doesn't sound like a large number, but that's thousands of voters votes who are able to be counted, who otherwise maybe in the past would have made a mistake that would have ended up getting their ballot cast out.

You know, Tom, really quickly, we've been hard on the General Assembly tonight, but I think it's important to acknowledge that they have made sure that the counties have the funding they need to put these legal, fair and accurate elections on.

And we need to encourage the General Assembly to continue do that as we move forward into the future.

They have done an excellent job making sure we're fully funded in order to put what is essentially two elections on.

I'm just trying to give a little push.

That's all.

I know.

I know.

But I don't want to take my money.

I said.

A.J., I have a quick question.

Since you brought up a lot of those kind of technical errors.

I feel like the dates have been litigated every time I blink and turn around just for clarity.

And then people should if you see it, you should fill it out.

You should not skip it.

Don't think everything that's there says to do do.

But what is the current ruling as to dates?

Like are those votes counted or not?

Well, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reverse set a district court decision from western Pennsylvania that said that at the lack of a date was not a material defect.

The Third Circuit says it is the judge the legislation says shall.

And so the Third Circuit adopted the view that you must date your ballot.

That's the law at this point in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

And that case will very likely, I think, go to the Supreme Court.

There was a case that came out of the Lehigh Valley, as many of your viewers know, that involved the judicial election.

And because candidate conceded it went up to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court said the case is basically moot, meaning there's no more controversy.

They ordered the Third Circuit, which in a different panel of the third Circuit.

This is very confusing.

They had said that that what the Western district judge said, a new panel of the Third Circuit, a three judge panel, said exactly the reverse.

So it's maybe confusing enough that the Supreme Court is going to hear when the Supreme Court basically punted the other case back to the circuit.

Justice Alito said that the the third Circuit's decision saying that this wasn't a material defect was likely wrong.

So my prediction would be, if it gets to the Supreme Court, which I think it will at some point, Supreme Court is probably going to affirm the Third Circuit and say the things the ballots must be dated.

But to Michael's point, the fact of the matter is, I think there's a great effort to try to simplify it is a little more complicated.

That's a work in process.

But I'm heartened by the numbers that he gives because I think people are doing better.

But for all of the viewers, got it dated.

If you don't date it the way the law stands right now, you do risk having it thrown out unless you have ballot carrying, of course, which is a whole different issue.

Judge, I have a question for you.

The why is a federal court applying Pennsylvania law?

Because there's a constitutional question that that involves the the federal rights or the federal Civil Rights Act.

Within that, there are voting provisions.

And nothing in the in the Voting Rights Act within the Civil Rights Act is is meant to or everything is meant to say that you cannot set up barriers to voting, you know, such as, you know, in the old days that poll taxes and, you know, literacy tests and so forth.

So the allegation was that it violated the federal Civil Rights Act because, in effect, the date was superfluous.

And even though the Pennsylvania legislature says that it was material that federal law overwrites, that because it impedes a federal right, a statutory right to vote.

Little complicated, but where the Third Circuit ultimately came down is they said, look, the Pennsylvania legislation means what it says.

They said they say shall and shall means it what it says, the countervailing argument is who cares about the date because it's where it's received.

If you know when it's received the dates in material.

But regardless of the intellectual or legal arguments, the fact is it has to be dated right now.

But it is the federal Civil Rights Act and the voting rights provision within it that the courts pivoted on.

Thank you.

And I will say the date of the date when you fill out the ballot and sign the voter declaration form on the ballot, not your birth date, which is a common, common mistake, I would say.

But we've had a couple of questions come in regarding voter I.D.

We've heard stories about dead people voting where the procedures that are in place to prevent like obvious cases of fraud like that from happening.

Okay.

So let me just be very clear about something.

Nobody undocumented, no undocumented person votes in Northampton County.

And to my knowledge, no dead people vote in Northampton County that it is very important to understand that it's almost impossible for an undocumented person to get registered to vote.

You either need an official issued driver's license or identification card from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or your Social Security number, and then that that's checked through the have a system that was created Helping America Vote Act that was created after the 2000 election where we had the hanging chads and all that stuff.

So undocumented people don't vote in Northampton County.

Dead people don't vote in Northampton County.

And if I find out that someone is voting undocumented or they're voting for dead people, we're going to refer them to the district attorney to be put in jail.

And Mr. McDonnell, at the state level, is there.

Are there any other issues that the state is doing or is that mostly a county endeavor?

Well, the counties are primarily responsible for managing their voter rolls and making sure that their voter registrations are up to date, voter registration records are up to date and accurate.

I will just add that there are safeguards in place.

We do actually require voters, if you're voting in person for the first time in a new precinct, you have to show qualifying photo ID and when you register and when you apply, if you want to vote, mail in or absentee, when you apply for one of those ballots, you do have to provide, as is the executive side, a driver's license number or some Social Security number.

So there really are a lot of checks in place to make sure that the people who are voting are who they say they are.

Something else I will add on the back end is that every ballot that is given to a voter is has a unique barcode on it and is attached to that specific voter.

So there would be no way a county wouldn't find out if someone tried to cast a ballot under someone else's name because of the way the system is set up and the way they reconcile the voter records after the election leading up to the election and then after it has taken place.

Very good.

Well, gentlemen, that's all the time that we have for tonight.

I want to thank you for being with us.

A special thanks goes out to keep our republic for its civic education, work and partnership in producing tonight's program.

Thanks to Muhlenberg College, political scientist Chris Borg County executive LaMonte McClure, Judge John Jones and Michael McDonald of the Pennsylvania Department of State.

We also want to thank our studio audience.

Please give yourselves a round of applause.

And thank you for everyone watching at home.

That will do it for this community conversation.

Trust in our elections.

From all of us here at PBS 39 and Lehigh valley News.com, I'm Tom ShoreTel.

Good night.