- [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by Keep Our Republic and OnePoint.

(chill music) WVIA, in partnership with Keep Our Republic presents "Conversations for the Common Good, Civil Discourse, Civic Engagement, Trust In Our Elections".

And now moderator Tracey Matisak.

- Hello everyone and welcome to "Conversations for the Common Good: Trust in our Elections", brought to you by Keep Our Republic and WVIA.

I'm Tracey Matisak.

Thank you so much for joining us.

The 2024 election is just weeks away, and Pennsylvanians will vote for a president, a senator, an attorney general, congressional representatives and a host of local officials.

Now, normally election season is a time of anticipation and even excitement, but for too many voters in Pennsylvania and across the country, election season has generated anxiety and a sense of mistrust in the process itself.

So tonight, we want to address those concerns in a nonpartisan way that helps all of us as voters feel more confident in the electoral process.

As a swing state, of course, Pennsylvania is absolutely crucial to the outcome of the presidential election.

So it's all the more important that we as the electorate are armed with accurate information as we prepare to cast our votes.

Now, to help us with that, we have assembled an expert panel.

They're here to answer your questions and mine about how the process works, how we can combat misinformation, and why we can be confident in the outcome.

So joining me tonight are Judge Thomas Vanaskie, who served on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and as Chief Judge of the US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which includes the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre area.

John Christy is Chairman of the Monroe County Commissioners.

The Commissioners' duties include voter registration and supervision of elections.

Chairman Christy is the owner of OM Christy Inc, a construction management and consulting firm.

He has also served as a volunteer firefighter and EMT.

Michael McDonald is Director of Policy for the Pennsylvania Department of State, which promotes the integrity of the electoral process.

As policy director, Michael provides research, analysis and recommendations for key departmental issues, including elections.

As a former litigator at Ballard Spahr, Michael specialized in matters relating to constitutional law, election administration and voting rights among other concerns.

And Borys Krawczeniuk, lead political reporter for WVIA News.

Borys formerly served as an investigative reporter for the "Scranton Times-Tribune", where he covered a wide range of political stories.

He has earned numerous state and national journalism awards, including the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors Award.

Welcome to all of you, and thank you so much for being with us.

for this conversation.

- Thank you.

- Of course, before we begin, I wanna take just a moment to thank Keep Our Republic.

It's a nonpartisan civic education organization dedicated to protecting a republic of laws and strengthening the checks and balances of our democratic electoral system.

So let's talk elections.

Judge Vanaskie, I'll begin with you.

And I'd like to start with the why, because mistrust in elections is not necessarily a new phenomenon in America, but it does seem to have gathered steam in recent years.

And I wonder if you could share with us what you think some of the factors are that have caused people to lose a degree of confidence in the process.

- Well, thank you for that question and it is an important one because restoration of confidence in our elections is vital.

Why are we at, why are we at the place we're at now?

Well, there's a great polarization in our country.

There's no secret about that, but it's not the worst time ever in our country.

Our country has had, gone through much greater crises than we see today, or crises of confidence.

There was a tied election, I know we're getting a little history here, but in 1876 when you had the election come down to Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, and they ended up appointing an electoral commission that consisted of representatives of, from Congress, senators, Supreme Court justices, ultimately came down to their decision about which electoral votes to count.

And that's part of our process, right?

We use the Electoral College and that's how we end up with these close, close elections.

And in the wake of that dispute, and by the way, Rutherford B. Hayes won I think by one or two Electoral College votes, and that was decided two days before inauguration.

So we're gonna see delays this year, but they're not gonna be up to two days before the inauguration.

Anyway, after the 1876 election, we had an Electoral Count Reform Act passed in the 1880s.

And that law stayed on the books until nine, until 2020 and 2022 because of the problems that were encountered after the 2020 election.

There were ambiguities in the law that could be argued, you know, what was the role of the vice president?

If you remember going back to 2020, what was the role of the vice president?

He's presiding over the Electoral College.

Could he decide what votes to count, what votes not to count?

There's great pressure brought to bear on the vice president at that time.

So that's a long way of why do we have the distrust we have?

Well, it goes back to then, I think, and it goes back to the only time in my memory where the loser of election did not concede was 2020, never conceded.

There's this, you know, still unsettled concern that there was fraud in the election.

There's no proof of that.

And there were lots of lawsuits and there were lawsuits here in the middle part of the state.

A member of my former court, Matthew Brann, had to decide questions of voter fraud.

- [Tracey] Yeah.

- Brought by, you know, luminaries or former luminaries, including Mayor Giuliani, he testified in court.

- [Tracey] Yeah.

- In Williamsport.

- And I think we all.

- But all of that was not proven.

And I think what we have to realize is that, and we can talk about the safeguards that are in place, but when we have leaders question the results, we have to look hard at it and say okay, show us the evidence.

And that's what it, that's, I think that's part of it, anyway.

- Yeah, I wanna come back and talk a little bit more about legislation in just a bit.

But Michael McDonald, to you, while the state sets the election standards, counties have some flexibility in the way that elections are run.

Could that be problematic because the system is not streamlined, or is it advantageous to have counties carry out elections in different ways?

- It's actually an advantage.

And I don't think it's fair to say that counties just have flexibility.

Counties are primarily responsible for administering the elections in their jurisdictions.

When we have election day at the Department of State, we don't have one election.

We refer to it as 67 different elections happening at the same time.

And there's a good reason for that.

There's a tradition in Pennsylvania as a commonwealth of reserving a lot of discretion and authority to local authorities who are going to be closer to the communities that they're governing.

And really there is an advantage in having a disaggregated system of election administration.

There's actually a significant security advantage that comes with that because in a centralized system, if one thing goes wrong, it could affect all of the counties in all parts of the state.

But now if there's one county who's experiencing some kind of issue, having some trouble on election day, the other 66 counties are gonna be able to proceed just fine.

So the disaggregation actually makes it more difficult to interfere with inadvertently or intentionally interfere with the system in a way that would jeopardize it.

- And Commissioner Christy, you know a thing or two about that, can you talk to us about how elections generally work in Monroe County?

- I don't think I'll be as eloquent as my two counterparts here, but it starts when the, it starts way earlier than people think, but right now we're getting ready to mail out our ballots.

Once the, there's always litigation and once litigation is settled or to the point where we cannot wait any longer, we will mail out our mail-in ballots and those will go out and they will start to come back in.

And then what we do is we take them back in, we have a machine that will take, runs them through a scanner, takes a picture of the envelope, we then verify the signatures or make sure the signatures are correct.

It weighs the envelope and it spins it until it's sorted, so to speak, okay?

If it's rejected, then we take it out and we can look at it.

And then what we'll do is if you did not, if it comes out not signed or anything, in Monroe County we have always allowed curing, okay?

- And can you explain what that means?

- Well, if you have an envelope and let's say you didn't sign the outside of it, we will make one attempt to contact you to say that there is a problem with your ballot and for you to come into the elections office to cure that ballot, to make it correct so that it can be accepted.

And then the person can come in and do that.

And then we will take that ballot and we put it in with the rest.

But then what we do is we take those ballots when they come in and then they're, we do a configuration and then we send that to the Department of State.

Those ballots are then taken and put into a locked, secure room until such time as it's election day.

At election day at 7:00 AM, we start opening ballots.

You cannot do pre-canvassing in the State of Pennsylvania until election day, which means even opening the envelopes.

We would love to open the envelopes and not remove anything, but it's just another step.

2020, we had over 18,000 ballots.

So if you think about, you know, much larger counties than us, it's a time-consuming process.

- Yeah.

- So then we separate the envelopes and then we open the ballot out envelopes, and then we have a cadre of employees that come in and we then run 'em through a scanner and then we count them.

- Yeah, and Michael McDonald, the commissioner just talked about ballot curing that is done in Monroe County, at least.

Is that something that is done statewide or is that county by county?

- It's county by county.

The election code permits counties to contact voters and let them know if there's an error with their ballot, an error that may result in the ballot being canceled or thrown out.

But it doesn't require it.

And so it's a county by county practice.

- [Tracey] Yeah.

- The Department of State absolutely encourages counties to give voters an opportunity to correct technical and often cases meaningless mistakes on their ballots so that the ballot can count.

But we're also here to support counties who do that or don't or do something in between.

- Yeah, I wanna come back to that point, but Borys, in the meantime, both candidates for president have been to this region very recently for rallies.

You've been covering them, and I'm curious to hear your take as you talk with voters on not only their level of interest in the election, but also their level of trust in the process.

- There's a lot of interest in the election.

The, as much as there's ever been.

Just in 2020, 70, for example in Pennsylvania, 76% of the electorate turned out.

So there's a tremendous interest.

I'm not sure it'll get to it.

We'll see if it'll get to that level again.

But the last two elections, and I'm going to say it and say that it was because Donald Trump was on there the last two elections there were more turnout than had been in a long time.

And I think we'll see that again.

What was your other question, the?

- Just about the level of trust in the process.

What are voters telling you about that?

- Well, I mean, there's, both sides are preparing with teams of lawyers and also pre-election training.

The Republicans have what they call Trump Force 47.

And they're basically having these seminars on a regular basis, teaching people how to challenge ballots, how to go to the polls and observe, things like, things that you have to do.

So I expect that there's gonna be a whole lot of challenges on election day.

And at the same time the Democrats are, you know, doing similar things, making sure that people who can vote, you know, that the rules are followed there.

I expect that beyond the fact that you can't count the mail-in ballots and that the, because of that, the, until election day, and because of that, the, you know, final vote in Pennsylvania and elsewhere will take longer than the election night, that you, after that you're gonna see a bunch of challenges to various rules in the election code.

The, there's already lawsuits pending right now.

Some of these things are getting straightened out as the court rulings come down, but there's still other court rulings pending that we haven't heard.

You know, and there'll be additional lawsuits when somebody always finds some wrinkle to challenge.

Our election code is pretty old, so there's some hole, there's some ways you could, there's holes in it.

- So Judge Vanaskie, I'd like to hear from you about that and whether you anticipate a great number of challenges.

Again I mean, after 2020, to your point, there was so much litigation.

Do you anticipate we're gonna see that again?

- I do anticipate that we'll see substantial litigation.

I don't know if it'll reach the numbers that we had in 2020, but it, there are going to be lawsuits and that's just the reality of it.

Right now, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has put in expedited procedures to have those matters decided quickly.

You have to have, file your notice of appeal within three days and got 24 hours to file your brief.

And they're going to do what they can to expedite it.

Because while litigation may delay a final count, there are provisions in place where the Electoral College, certificates of ascertainment of the Electoral College are to be submitted to Washington by December 11th.

So there are deadlines in place.

The governor's got the responsibility to issue the certificate of ascertainment.

And you know, if the governor doesn't do it, well, there could be litigation over that, but there are these deadlines to get this, get certainty in the results 'cause that's what we need.

We need there to be certainty at a point in time.

- What does that mean in terms of recounts potentially with the hard deadlines that are in place?

Do you see any potential issues there in terms of how long it takes to do recounts if necessary?

- I do see issues there, and that ties back in to the certificates of ascertainment needing to be in by the 11th of December.

It's gonna be a very interesting time and a challenging time.

- Just, and Mike kind of touched on this, this whole issue, part of what, why this happened is Pennsylvania started, Pennsylvania is not the only one, but in other states, mail-in ballots became a much bigger deal.

And the mistake that Pennsylvania has made and Mike, this is what Mike touched on, is that you can't start counting the mail-in ballots until 7:00 AM on election day.

And that means that the larger counties, as he said, go, you know, take much longer.

They go, we're, in the old days, we got the results on election night.

You know, and true, there was less division, so you didn't have, the races weren't as tight sometimes that, you know, but that creates a lot of suspicion about the election.

If they would move this, if they would move the deadline on the mail-in ballot, when you could count the mail-in ballots a couple of weeks earlier, a lot of these challenges to counting the ballots could happen actually before the election.

You could, you know, you, as they open them, like you could say, okay, that guy didn't sign the outer envelope twice, which is a recent Supreme Court ruling.

You know, that could happen sooner.

So we wouldn't, we'd get a count sooner.

- Yeah, Michael?

- I just want to paint maybe a rosier picture I think of what's to come in November.

The Department of State is, we're really confident in the department that our counties are prepared to count the ballots as fast and as accurately as they can.

We sort of chafe when people say or predict that there's going to be a delay in counting ballots.

There is no delay.

It takes as long as it takes and counting takes time.

We would certainly prefer and support moving up the deadline for when counties may begin the process of getting the ballots prepared to begin counting them.

But I think we all learned a lot of lessons after 2020, the first major election we had with mail-in ballots.

And I think we've adopted some additional technology around the state.

I think counties have implemented, especially the big counties, have implemented some good processes to make sure that they're able to move along quickly.

And with respect to the recounts, we're also really hopeful that citizens are entitled to challenge certain decisions by the boards of elections.

There are certain provisions that entitle certain groups of people to seek recounts, but we're really confident that our courts are gonna be able, as the judge said, move through things in a very expeditious manner.

- And Commissioner Christy, for you, because you are involved with that process, what are your thoughts about maybe either keeping things as they are, where the mail-in ballots cannot be opened until the morning of election day, or would it make your job easier to be able to start sooner?

- Would it make my job easier?

Yes, but it's not the end of the world, okay?

Because you have all your boxes in front of you, you have an automatic opener, okay?

You take 'em out, it zips through them, you put 'em back in the box and then about nine o'clock you start assembling your people.

In 2020, I think we were done about 3:30, okay?

That's 18,000 ballots taken care of.

But at the same time, the stress that's put on is that while we're doing that and counting that, our election director has to be there.

So she's not in the office running the other election.

Now I am a blessed man in that I have the best election director in the State of Pennsylvania, and I have the best assistant director in the State of Pennsylvania, that are in Monroe County.

So that's not a problem for us.

You go to other smaller counties, there's only one person.

So that's, you know, causes a problem.

One of the other things that comes up is the introduction of technology causes people to go, ooh.

You know?

- Mm-hmm.

- And the fact that we got, went to scanners where you fill out the ballot and it's scanned, a lot of people have used that now for four years.

I don't think it's as bad of a situation as it was in the beginning.

We also went to electronic poll books, which is a godsend because as the laws change and, you know, people wanna allow election day registration, how do you put those people into a poll book?

- And explain what a poll book is for.

- Well in the old days, you would go and you would sign a poll book, okay?

- [Tracey] Oh, gotcha, mm-hmm.

- So that was a printed, we had to print those every election.

So then you have timetables that you have to meet for the printers to get those poll books up and so on.

So in 2020, we had a township that had very long lines, it had a very large turnout.

And through the use of technology, we were able to go back to the office, get another poll book.

I took it out to that location and I checked people in, okay?

So we were expecting to have polls close at eight o'clock.

We were expecting that those lines would be taken care of by 11:30 at night.

We were able to have everything done by 9:30.

So, you know, the technology allows us to do, to take care of problems as they come up.

- Yeah.

- But people will still question the technology.

- Well, and can you address that, Commissioner?

Because you mentioned that, you know, when technology entered the picture, that created some anxiety for people.

What can you tell voters about that process to reassure them that the technology works the way it's supposed to work?

- There is built-in security measures, okay?

That poll pad that you're signing is just linked to the other poll pads and nothing else, okay?

We bring that poll pad back to the office.

We download all the information off that poll pad.

So there's checks and balances, there are checks and balances to everything that we do, okay?

When you drop a ballot into a dropbox, okay, that ballot is picked up, it's got a seal on the dropbox.

We take the seal off, we check the seal, we write the seal down, we count the number of ballots, we put a new seal on the box, it comes back to our office in a box that has a seal on it, and we then double check that seal, then we recount the ballots, okay?

Make sure that they said there are 67, there are 67 on our side.

There is constant checks and balances in place.

- [Tracey] Yeah.

- I am extremely confident in that any ballot that is put in into our hands is counted and counted correctly.

- And Judge Vanaskie, I wanna ask you about a recent state Supreme Court ruling that had to do with mail-in ballots.

And as I understand it, they're saying that any ballot that has, I think that doesn't have a date on it is not going to be counted.

- [Mr. Vanaskie] (indistinct) - Yes, can you explain that and what you think, what the impact will be on the election?

- Well, number one, the Supreme Court's, Pennsylvania Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of that issue.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed or vacated a decision from the Commonwealth Court and intermediate level Appellate Court that held that the missing date on that outer envelope did not disqualify the ballot, did not disqualify the vote.

What the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said is because not all 67 counties were named as parties to that litigation, to that lawsuit, the Commonwealth Court didn't have the authority to issue a ruling that had statewide applicability.

Now, having said that, the Commonwealth Court I think has invited the parties to come back in and add in the other 65 counties and see what happens.

I don't know, but right now you don't have a date on that outer envelope, it will not be counted.

- So that means that the voter could not be even notified to fix that?

- I think the voter can be notified, yes.

- Okay.

- And that goes back to what Michael said in terms of counties can decide what to do with ballots that are facially invalid.

I guess that would be one that you'd consider to be facially invalid 'cause the law says you need a date on the outside of the envelope, even though it's received in time.

So it's clear that it's been completed in a proper way or in a timely way, without that date on it it doesn't comply with the law.

So that's still to be determined.

Stay tuned.

But right now, the state of the law is without that date, it will not be counted.

- Michael McDonald, I want to talk before we move into misinformation, which is a huge piece of this, but as you well know, all of us know that there are a number of states that have made it more difficult for people to vote, whether people have been purged from the rolls or there have been shorter, you know, times to vote or fewer polling locations.

Can you talk about where Pennsylvania stands in all of that and whether the state has made it easier for people to have access to the vote as long as they're eligible?

- I think Pennsylvania's in really good shape there, and it's one of the top priorities of the Shapiro administration, especially going into this election season, that every eligible Pennsylvanian can cast a ballot and have that ballot count.

And that's our number one goal.

That's our, what we call our North Star, guiding us every day.

And some things that we have done to try to improve those results and make sure people are more likely to be able to successfully cast a ballot is we've tried to mitigate some of the opportunities for people to make the kinds of mistakes that may result in their ballot being disqualified.

So something we're really proud about is toward the end of last year, we engaged a design firm, a civic design firm that redesigned our mail ballot materials.

So we introduced statewide new ballot envelopes, new instruction sheets, new configurations of what you received in the mail when you applied for a mail ballot.

And it, every color, every word, every letter was very precisely put to try to minimize.

- [Mr. Christy] Painstakingly.

- Painstakingly.

(group laughs) Indeed to try to minimize the chance that a voter might forget to put the date on the ballot, put the wrong date on the ballot.

We have voters who, when they're filling out their ballot, they put their birth date, when in fact they should be putting the date on which they fill out the ballot.

We highlighted the signature box to make sure voters maybe wouldn't inadvertently miss that they needed to sign it.

So these little changes had a big impact.

- [Tracey] Yeah.

- We introduced these changes and it resulted in a 13% drop in the number of ballots disqualified after the primary election.

We ran some numbers and so that really made it easier for people to be able to cast a ballot and not step into any kind of, make any kinds of mistakes that would make it not count.

- Yeah, I'm curious how, what has been the percentage of votes that end up not counting because of some error prior to this?

Because you said it's been cut down quite a bit.

- It's not, I don't have a specific number for you.

It's, I think in the single digit percents, which, so thankfully it's not, by no means a majority of ballots, but every vote is precious and sacred.

And if you think about when a ballot gets disqualified because somebody forgot to put a date on it, that is somebody who took the time to sit down, fill out their choices, and they think they are, will be able to cast that ballot.

They think they submitted it, and it won't count.

And it really is, it's, it really is a shame.

And so any reduction in the number of voters who face that situation is really a win.

- Lemme give you an example of what, one of the things they did, because it came up in a recent House race around here, the 117th House district.

The challenger to the incumbent Republican said that six mail-in ballots shouldn't count because they didn't put, the pre-printed ballot had two zero.

So you fill in the year of the ballot, two four, supposed to put in two four.

The challenger said that these six ballots shouldn't count, but the, because the voters didn't write the two four.

So the courts ended up saying that's not a reason to disqualify those ballots, those ballots counted.

But the Department of State decided to, that going forward, the ballot, all the envelopes should be, have the pre-printed year on it so that you don't have to fill out that two four.

So that's no longer an issue.

There is just no, there is virtually no fraud in Pennsylvania's elections or actually across the nation.

It's, there's so many checks and balances in place.

I wish people would take the time to go down their voter registration office and walk through the process of just filling out a mail-in ballot and how they can tell, the code, the barcodes on the ballots themselves and on the envelopes are all unique.

There's just no way it can happen.

- Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up.

- People make mistakes.

There are irregularities, don't get me wrong, but widespread fraud is nearly impossible.

- Yeah, and I think that's a really important point because there have been so many allegations of fraud, particularly in the last election, dead people voting, people who are otherwise ineligible voting.

And the fact is as we've heard it that really that is not nearly the kind of problem that we've been led to believe that it is.

- Especially in the computer age, where it's the Department of State in Pennsylvania regularly gets notices of who died.

If they send notices to the counties to find, to let them know you gotta take that person off the voter roll.

They'll, mail-in ballots.

If somebody fills out a mail-in ballot, they die, that ballot gets thrown out, you know, that, there's all kinds of detailed instructions and procedures like that to prevent, you know, votes that shouldn't count from counting.

- Yeah, so you mentioned computers, and we have to talk about misinformation and I'll start with you, Borys, to just get your sense as you're talking with voters, are you hearing misinformation from people?

Like do you have a sense that people are getting bad information in some of the interviews that you're doing with them, sort of parroting what they might see on social media?

- I haven't asked voters specifically about that, but you could, if you go on social media, the amount of people who think that it's easy to rig an election is pretty astonishing.

Like the, it's just, you know, and you can't, you can't make them think otherwise.

They just, you know, they will argue.

For example, one, actually a high school classmate of mine was arguing that, you know, because Joe Biden stayed home so much during the 2020 election, it was impossible for Trump to, for Biden to get, you know, like how do you argue against something like that?

You know, that there had to be fraud, you know?

What are you gonna say?

Like, you know?

- Yeah, and it makes it difficult for people who are in charge of elections to.

- [Borys] Yeah.

- To do their job, right?

Because it is difficult sometimes to convince people.

Michael McDonald, to you about artificial information, AI, and now anybody who's got a laptop and a little bit of skill can create these deepfakes that look very real.

And you can just imagine the impact that that has on elections.

Talk about that and your concerns around AI and its impact on this and future elections.

- It's very concerning and we're doing everything we can to try to stay ahead of it and mitigate the risks that may come from it.

The Governor Shapiro convened an election security task force, which brings together members from the Department of State, representatives from the counties, and also law enforcement, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to create sort of, open up channels of communication to make sure that we are all staying on top of the threats that are out there.

If it looks like that there's a threat coming, we'll be able to work with the appropriate authorities to prevent it.

And we've worked really hard trying to fill, sort of fill the space out there with accurate information.

The Department of State has made lots of resources and information available on this website.

We created what we call a voter education toolkit that on our website, you can go and download images.

There are content, there are ads on there that are sort of easy to share on social media, easy to share with your friends, send a link to your family.

We encourage people to go and be sources of reliable and accurate information.

Be a little skeptical of sources that you're unfamiliar with or that aren't officials and authorities, because there is a lot of misinformation out there and it is a threat.

- Judge, I wanna ask you about foreign actors, speaking of threats.

We have heard of late that, from the Director of National Intelligence who says that Russia is still a huge threat.

Criminal charges we understand are forthcoming because Iran allegedly hacked the Trump campaign recently.

China is another factor.

Can you talk about foreign actors and the threat that they pose to this election in particular?

- Well, I think the threat they pose is their ability to put information out on social media to influence how people think of things, disinformation.

That's where I think the greatest threat comes, doesn't come in the counting of ballots.

It comes in the spread of information and misleading people into believing certain things that are not real.

So I think Michael mentioned, you know, the degree of skepticism you have to have when you're reading something, you're seeing it on TikTok, for example, and that's not necessarily, you know, real.

Bear that in mind.

And you have to bear in mind that the videos that you see today are not necessarily real.

Used to be a picture tells 1,000 words.

A picture still tells 1,000 words, but they might be false words.

So I, foreign actors are going to try to influence the outcome of our election.

The great thing about our country, about the United States is that we do have elections.

They are free and they are fair, they're reliable, and they show the will of the people, ultimately.

That's what we want to emphasize and that's what Keep Our Republic is all about.

It's not a question of who wins, it's a question of having faith in our system.

This system has been around now for well over 200 years and we need to keep it because while democracy is messy, it's still better than any other system that's been devised so far.

- And Borys, one last thing on this point, and that is, and I know that Michael talked about the website that people can go to, what suggestions do you have for voters in terms of vetting their information?

Because to the judge's point, you know, TikTok is out there, not the best source of information.

People are pulling information from all over the internet.

What do you suggest in terms of ways to vet information, to feel confident that what you're getting is accurate?

- There are plenty of sources on the internet from both sides.

So if you read something that matches what you think, read something that doesn't, find something that doesn't, because that, I do that as a reporter all the time because you're trying to be fair.

So you go to sources, you learn, you read other, you know, more than one source is, if you read something on the internet and you believe it, you're a fool.

You really are because there's, you know, you don't know what to believe anymore when you read it on the internet.

So read a lot more, you know?

You have a duty as a voter to do that.

You really do.

And a lot of people don't, but they, that really should be the way people approach things.

You know, on any issue, there's plenty out there on what both candidates for president have said on different issues.

You just have to find, you have to go, you have to be patient and you have to go look for it.

- Commissioner Christy, the Pennsylvania Secretary of State, Al Schmidt, had talked on more than one occasion about the issue of turnover of poll workers, particularly after 2020 and all the chaos that followed.

And I'm wondering what you're seeing in Monroe County and also what you think needs to be done to encourage people to engage in that process?

- I live under a blessed star in that we do not have that problem.

Our poll workers are still consistent.

They still come out, they feel engaged.

And so I don't have that problem.

I think that, I think it's a wonderful opportunity for people to participate in the election.

And if you are, have the time and want to take the training, it's an amazing part.

It's an amazing process.

It's a long day, but it's still, you're part of the process, you know, and you're part of the solution.

So I encourage anybody that has the time to do so to volunteer or, I mean, you do get paid, but, you know, it's an important part of our process.

- And Michael, to you, yes, talk about that if you would and about, you know, the turnover of poll workers and kind of what you're seeing at the state level.

- Well, just to echo the commissioner, there are over 9,000 polling places in Pennsylvania on election day.

Each of them need to be staffed with four or five, six poll workers.

And it is crucial that we get members of our community to come out and volunteer and help that process.

So we absolutely echo and encourage people to get involved in that way.

We have seen turnover and not only in Pennsylvania, but across the country.

Elections have become more complicated.

They have certainly become much more scrutinized.

And we are in an environment where any mistake, however small or however innocent, could be magnified and it could be construed as something malicious or something incompetent.

And that's a lot, that's stressful.

That's a lot of pressure to stand up against.

So I, there has been some turnover.

Thankfully we, there are a lot of veteran county election officials who still remain.

Monroe County is one of them.

Something that the department has done is we've really poured a lot of resources into developing a training program for election directors around the commonwealth.

We had always made sort of resources available and had guidance out there and sort of documents to try to walk people through the processes.

But we've staffed up, so to speak, and developed a series of videos and came up with all sorts of materials and resources that we've made available to, especially the new county directors and election staff, to make sure that they have all the information they need to be able to navigate what really is a, it's a year-long process.

The work of an election director never, never ends.

And so we wanna make sure we have the resources there to be able to provide support.

- It's not an easy job to walk in off the street to do it.

It is not.

And like I say, if you, the other election directors are always willing to help you know, new election directors.

They call each other all the time and you know, some people have processes in place and they share them, this is how we do this here.

I just wanna point to one thing that I wanna make sure that everybody realizes that if you go, if you have any problem, you didn't mail in your ballot, you, it's election day, you don't know what to do if you had a mail in, you can always take that and surrender that at a poll, at your polling place.

And if there is any, ever any question of a person's viability to vote, you can always vote provisionally, okay?

So at least you have a opportunity to have your story be heard that you know, your vote might be counted.

Some people get confused, but provisional, like I say, there's checks and balances all the way through.

- And as long as we're on that subject, Commissioner, can you talk about what the basic eligibility requirements are to be a voter in Pennsylvania?

I mean certainly Monroe County, but in Pennsylvania, what are the basic requirements?

- If I'm not mistaken, you have to be over 18 years of age, a citizen of the United States, and that's it.

- And that's the long and short of it.

And all of that is.

- That's it, yeah.

I'd love, go ahead.

- A resident of Pennsylvania.

- Of Pennsylvania yeah.

- You can't be.

- That's important.

- We don't let people from Jersey vote.

(group laughs) - Much as they might like to.

It.

- Just one point please, these poll workers are extremely dedicated.

And that's one of the dangers, is the fact that you're intimidating these people now is so that they're like, I don't need this for $100 a day.

You know, and you can, we've had examples in this area about what happens when you have less experienced election officials.

Luzerne County had multiple elections consecutively where there were major mistakes made because the check, the routine things that are normally go into preparing an election didn't happen.

And, you know, one year after another for three years in a row, they had major problems.

They just got through a primary, they were celebrating down there like the, you know, and hopefully they'll do that again in November.

- As a commissioner, I'm very involved, maybe too much, but if there is a problem, they'll send me out, okay?

If they're, so I usually put about 200 miles on my pickup truck every election.

(group laughs) - Well and Michael, to that point, the training that you talked about, is that really designed to also help protect workers?

Because, you know, we saw people, poll workers who were accused of all kinds of things, all kinds of nefarious activity that in fact they were not committing, they were just doing their job.

So does that training help in any way to protect poll workers from accusations like the kind that they faced in the last election?

- Well, I think it, you know, it's the counties are mostly responsible for conducting the training of poll workers.

The neighbors, the community members who are staffing the polling place on election day.

And the department is responsible for training the county officials, the election directors, and sort of the full-time staff at the county.

And I think anytime you ensure people know the rules, know the exceptions to the rules, know what's supposed to happen throughout the day, I think anytime you arm them with knowledge and accurate information, I think that they are more confidently able to confront any uncertainty or even accusation that they don't know what they're doing.

- Yeah, we have some questions here from our audience.

So let's start with this one, which is where does Pennsylvania stand on voter ID, you know, driver's licensing, et cetera?

So Michael, I'll direct that one to you.

- Voter ID is required in Pennsylvania if you are voting in person for the first time.

So the first time you go to vote at a polling place, either your first time voting at all, or if you had just moved and it's your first time in that district, you need to bring a photo ID with you and you can go to our website, vote.pa.gov.

We have a list of the acceptable IDs.

- Okay, great.

And also we have a couple questions here.

This one says I reached out to the Pennsylvania State Finance Office following the 2023 school board election to ask who is responsible for enforcing campaign finance laws regarding local election and was told that the state PA office has no jurisdiction over local school board elections.

Do you know who does?

So I would direct that to any of you who might know the answer to that question as it relates to campaign finance.

- (indistinct) - Local district attorneys usually would investigate the election and then if there's a, some sort of conflict, they would ask the State Attorney General to do that.

- And a follow-up question, what are the campaign finance laws for LLCs making expenditures to influence a local election and who enforces whether they, the LLCs, complete campaign finance paperwork?

So question about LLCs for anyone?

- The, I mean the department is, the department does administer the system of reporting campaign finance, campaign contributions and candidates when they file a run, they have to, they have to submit all sorts of paperwork related to their campaign finances.

So the Department of State does house that information and we do check to make sure that candidates for certain offices are filing the paperwork that they need to file.

Beyond that though, if there's a suspicion that somebody may have run afoul of those regulations and rules, then it would be a matter for law enforcement.

- Yeah, so many of the things that we could talk about here, but one of the things that we hear people talk a lot about around this time is having a voting plan.

And I wonder if we could talk a little bit about that, and I'm thinking about parents like myself who are you know, encouraging their young adult children to get out and vote wherever they might live and how to give some guidance on how to create a voting plan so that you're prepared for election day, whether you're mailing your vote in or whether you're planning to vote in person.

And Michael, I'll let you start with that one, but what's the best way to formulate a plan?

- Well, it, we recommend that there are three main ways you can cast a ballot in Pennsylvania and need to pick the one that's convenient and easiest for you.

We are really grateful to be able to live in a commonwealth that offers no excuse mail-in balloting.

So anybody for any reason or no reason can apply for a mail-in ballot provided that they're eligible to vote and cast it from wherever, they can have it delivered to wherever address they're residing at, receive it and submit it to their county and have it count.

We also have what's called on-demand voting, what we refer to as on-demand voting when mail ballots are available up until the application deadline, which is October 29th.

Voters can go into their county election offices and other designated areas, depending on the county, and request a mail-in ballot, fill it out and submit it all in one visit.

Of course, also you can go to the polls on election day, November 5th and vote in person in your precinct.

- Yeah, and the key is that you have to know where that is, right?

You wanna do that homework ahead of time and know where you're headed on that day.

- You sure do.

You can go on the Department of State website to look up your polling location.

- Most counties have those too.

Most counties have the ability to tell you, you can, and you can always call them.

- Yeah, so the resources are out there and it's a question of knowing where to look, particularly the, you know, the government websites, the county websites, really good sources of information for people to figure out where they need to be, what the rules are, how they get involved and engaged in the process.

- And I would encourage if you do choose to vote by mail, get your ballot in as soon as possible.

They, in order for your ballot to count, it has to be received by your county election office by 8:00 PM on election day.

And by far, we talk a lot about the mistakes people make on their filling out their ballot envelopes, but by far the number one reason mail ballots are disqualified in every election is because they're received too late.

- Wow.

- And that applies mostly we've determined to young voters, voters under 30.

Maybe is not much of a surprise, but the numbers back it up that young voters are much more likely to forget to return their ballot or return it too late.

- Yes, anyone who's a parent can attest to that.

(group laughs) - Well the other thing is if your child goes to college.

- [Tracey] Right.

- Don't have them register.

If you live in Scranton and your child is attending Bloomsburg University, don't register while you still have a registration here in Scranton.

- Yeah, and these are the things that people need to think about in advance because you can't wait until it gets too close to the election.

- But, you know, to the point that, to that point, there is a system that, you know, if he registers in Columbia County and he's registered in, someone's registered in Lackawanna County, there is a system that weeds one of those out.

Like the, you know, they, you.

- But it falls into this whole mystique of aha.

- [Tracey] Right.

- [Borys] That's right.

- You're trying to do something.

- Yeah, that's right.

- And it's not just one party or the other.

Both are bad, okay, in how they act sometimes.

And so, you know, just civility is the key.

- Yeah, I'd love to hear in our closing few minutes from each of you to just make your case to voters about why they can feel confident in the process, why elections are in fact safe and secure and Judge Vanaskie, I'll start with you.

- Well, I, from my perspective, the elections are safe and secure because of the checks and balances that are in place.

We heard about what precautions are taken at the county level and at the local level to make sure that that vote is properly counted.

It's an inviolate right we have, and one we want to safeguard, but I'm confident with the protections we have in place, the integrity of our poll workers, that vote will be accurately counted and recorded.

Bear in mind, we have post-election audits that are done.

We verify these results and that's why I'm confident.

- Commissioner?

- I think as a county commissioner, one of the most important jobs that we have is running an election, a safe and secure election.

And in Monroe County, we have spent an awful lot of time on deciding the equipment that we use, the training that we give, and we feel that we have made all the best decisions that we could.

And we stand by these, and I don't care who you vote for, I just want you to vote because that is, that makes our democracy work.

And I love when you have a high turnout as opposed to some 18% elections.

That's not, it's not right.

You should have a very high turnout and we're there to make it all count.

- Yeah, Michael.

- I wanna really jump on the word that the judge used, integrity, and the people who are in charge of running elections in this commonwealth care deeply about doing a good job, getting it right, treating voters fairly and equitably.

Pennsylvania elections are free and fair.

They are safe, they are secure.

And it's in large part thanks to the individuals who come to work throughout the 67 counties in Pennsylvania and set aside personal beliefs, maybe partisan affiliations.

When you meet with an election official, and this is certainly true of us in the Department of State, you don't know whether they're a Democrat or a Republican.

And really, you don't care.

People are absolutely committed, doggedly committed to make sure that this process works the way it's supposed to work and really see it as a sacred duty.

And you should have faith that people are really, have their hearts in it and doing it well.

- I'm gonna defend my profession for a moment because the, we're always interested about fraud.

You know, if there's voter fraud.

There has been reporters, especially in Philadelphia, not to pick on them because they get picked on a lot, but, you know, who made their careers rooting out a fraudulent Senate election in the 1990s.

Very famous case that just came up again, you know?

We do not wanna see voter fraud, but believe me, if there were, if there was a real case, the reporters would be on that story.

Like you know, I don't wanna use that expression, but the.

(group laughs) I have a visual, yeah.

But, you know, we would be on that story and if the idea that all these reporters across the country you know, just ignored all this fraud is just wrong.

And if you, if for no other reason, pick that one.

Like, if you, and if you have a real, real example, call us.

You know, like, we'll look into it.

- Yeah, and we'll hear about it.

Well that.

- Yeah we'll tell you about it.

- Yeah, well that is all the time we have.

Please join me in thanking our panelists for helping us to better understand the electoral process and arming us with the knowledge that we need to cast a well-informed vote.

Also, thanks to Keep Our Republic for sponsoring this conversation and others like it around the country.

And thanks to all of you for joining us in the studio or watching from home.

You know, a wise man once said that every election is determined by the people who show up.

So we encourage you tonight to be one of those people who shows up and makes your voice heard this November.

For WVIA, I'm Tracy Matisak, thanks for watching.

- [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by Keep Our Republic and OnePoint.