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Use of mailbox raised election suspicions

5 min read
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The information was broadcast at mid-afternoon Tuesday to anyone within earshot of a police scanner, and it went something like this:

“Report of 40 ballots being dropped into a mailbox on Cherry Avenue in Washington.”

Washington County sheriff’s Sgt. Thomas Lonick was dispatched, and he called for assistance from the post office to open the mailbox.

What was found?

“Absolutely nothing,” Lonick said Wednesday. “Just U.S. mail. That was checked out by the post office. We cleared the scene.”

There was talk that the caller was suspicious of red, white and blue materials placed inside the mailbox, but Lonick said he wasn’t aware of any particular colors.

This isn’t necessarily the case with other counties, but Washington County absentee ballots’ outermost envelopes were described by elections office personnel as white with black print.

The Washington County elections office received its order of absentee ballots earlier than expected from the printer, and 18 bulk mail trays were prepared for pickup by a courier service that transports them directly to a mail distribution center in Pittsburgh so they can be delivered to voters’ homes.

A story in last weekend’s Observer-Reporter pegged the first round of ballots being mailed on Friday, Oct. 2.

Ballots in mail trays – the first to be sent to the general public – weren’t ready for pickup by the courier until Wednesday, so someone returning a mass of Washington County absentee ballots would have been physically impossible on Sept. 29.

Allegheny County, however, began mailing ballots last week, so perhaps it’s not inconceivable that someone could travel from elsewhere to mail something in downtown Washington in broad daylight.

Unless there are special circumstances, only an individual voter is to return his or her absentee or mail-in ballot for counting. A third-party doing this on a scale involving scores of voters would be what’s known as “ballot harvesting,” which is not permissible in Pennsylvania.

“Can you believe someone called the police about that?” Washington County Elections Director Melanie Ostrander asked Wednesday.

Law enforcement did not inform her about the hubbub surrounding the mailbox.

“There was no need to contact us,” she said Wednesday, noting that Washington County is not using drop boxes or satellite elections offices to collect ballots outside of the elections office through Nov. 2. A drop box will be located on the first floor of Courthouse Square on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3.

During a Zoom press conference Wednesday morning, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said more than 2.3 million voters have applied for mail-in or absentee ballots and 1.9 million have been mailed or are in the process of being mailed.

She called a claim President Donald Trump made during a debate Tuesday night that poll watchers were being “kept out” of the process in Philadelphia “completely inaccurate” because a poll watcher’s position exists only when polling stations are open on Election Day and around the tabulation of votes.

“They literally don’t exist now,” Boockvar said. “They don’t have any right to be present in county elections offices.”

The state Supreme Court ruled that poll watchers must live in the county where they will be monitoring. Trump’s campaign had sought to invalidate the Pennsylvania poll-watcher law in federal court.

Poll watchers are appointed by candidates or political parties to sit inside of a polling place to monitor Election Day activity for perceived irregularities.

Republicans say they are unable to muster enough poll watchers in Philadelphia, where 1 in 5 of Pennsylvania’s Democratic voters live. Democrats charge that lifting the longstanding restriction would open the floodgates to voter intimidation in polling places.

Last week, the term “naked ballots” grabbed headlines after the state Supreme Court created a uniform standard throughout the 67 counties that all mail-in ballots must be sealed in secrecy envelopes before they are returned to counties or they must not be tabulated.

The custom in Washington County, for example, had been to count – not reject – ballots lacking secrecy envelopes.

Boockvar said she prefers the term “clothed ballot” to emphasize the importance of the secrecy envelope, and her office is planning voter education on various platforms.

These and other changes have raised the ire of the Republican-majority House State Government Committee, which on Wednesday approved a resolution creating a “Select Committee on Election Integrity” to provide oversight of the 2020 election, leading to possible legislation before and after the Nov. 3 general election.

House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff claimed the state Supreme Court “injected chaos into the general election by creating procedures not found anywhere in current law and ensuring Pennsylvania – and thereby, the nation – will not have reliable results on Election Day.”

The select committee is to hold hearings, subpoena witnesses, documents and other materials, take testimony and investigate.

In a statement, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, condemned the resolution, saying it undermines the authority of county-level elections officials and the Department of State.

Wolf said House Republicans “are not only walking in lockstep with President Trump to try to sow chaos and put the results of the election in question, they are also taking steps to take the authority to administer elections away from the Department of State.”

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