Dispelling The Clouds of Confusion Around the Upcoming Election

Lauren Cristella (left) of the Committee of Seventy and Amy Widestrom (right) of the League of Women Voters sit with Chris Satullo (center) to explain to Club members how to make sure their ballot will be counted.

By Eileen Kenna

Sunday Breakfast Club members and guests learned about the do's, don'ts and the considerable quirks of voting in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania at the first gathering of our new program year last Wednesday at the Mann Center.

The club theme this year is “It’s a Big Deal.” And yes, in case you haven’t heard, voting and making sure your vote gets counted in the November 2024 election amount to a Very Big Deal indeed in our battleground state.

Did you know that you can request your Pennsylvania “mail” ballot in person today, fill it out and turn it in all on the same day?

Or that sometimes you do really need to show ID at the polls? (If you’re a first-time voter or the first time voting at a different polling place.)

Or that (and please beware): If you don’t put the “correct” date on that ballot, it could be thrown out, never to be counted?

Answers to these and other questions were provided by Lauren Cristella, executive director of the Committee of Seventy, and Amy Widestrom, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, who were interviewed by Chris Satullo.

A confusing swirl of lawsuits around election rules have kept Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court and Supreme Court busy this fall - and sometimes at odds. The only thing that's clear in that legal mess is that both the Committee of Seventy and the League of Women Voters have been at the forefront of educating voters and working to protect their rights.

Earlier in the same day, she spoke to the club, Cristella was filmed by an ABC-6 TV crew as she cast her vote - to demonstrate how folks could do so now, ahead of Election Day Nov. 5. She went to the Board of Elections office in Philadelphia City Hall to get a ballot.

“It was a pretty straightforward process even though I forgot my wallet and ID," she said. "I printed out a pay stub as proof of my address, they accepted that, I filled out my ballot in my office, returned to City Hall, and got my ‘I voted’ sticker.”

Widestrom called that process “a form of early voting or voting by mail in person.” And then there’s the process of correctly filling out that mail-in ballot, the subject of many current lawsuits. The voter must sign and date the ballot's “secrecy envelope." Many are confused as to what date to use even though the envelopes now have 2024 printed on them as a prompt.

“A legitimate date is between the date the ballot was issued and Election Day,” Widestrom explained.

Seems easy enough, but she noted that some voters incorrectly assume they should put their date of birth on the envelope. That decision can lead to the trash bin, depending on where you live. Some counties have a “notice and cure policy” - where they notify the voter to come in and “fix” problems like a wrong date. Others don't.

While Philadelphia County has such a policy, Cristella called it “anemic” and not very effective when people can’t or won’t make the time to come in.

In Allegheny County, misdated ballots actually are mailed back to the voter to try again while Philadelphia won’t do that in the belief that this would “interrupt the chain of custody,” she said.

And if you live, say, in Northampton County in the Lehigh Valley, which has no “notice and cure policy,” you won’t find out until after the election that your vote didn’t count. (Northampton County, by the way, is considered by political experts to be one of the most pivotal "swing" counties in Pennsylvania, which in turn is considered by many to be the state on which the presidential election will turn).

Widestrom said the “best case scenario” in this election might be having only 1 percent of ballots be disqualified for various reasons: “Well, the 2020 election was decided by 1 percent and the 2016 by a half of 1 percent. So, throwing out any ballots is great cause for concern.”

The non-partisan League of Women Voters is crystal clear on its mission.

“We want to make sure that every voter can vote and that every ballot is counted,” Widestrom said. To that end, the league is involved in educational efforts in 66 of 67 counties. (Cameron County, population 4,540, is the only one missing).

Cristella and the Committee of Seventy have lobbied Harrisburg to change some rules that make it impossible to get votes counted in a timely manner.

“We will not have results on election night,” she said, noting that Pennsylvania counties cannot start counting mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. Election boards can't even begin preparing mail-in ballots to be counted until Election Day. Meanwhile, other states, including Florida, can count mail-ins “weeks in advance.”

Not having results on election night contributes to conspiracy theories. In a Committee of Seventy survey, 65 percent of responding Pennsylvania voters said delayed results “make people question the outcome,” Cristella said.

Widestrom a political science professor at Arcadia University before taking on leadership of the state organization this year, said the league has “eyes and ears” all over the state and has heard disinformation about "illegal voters" bubbling up from the grassroots.

“Disinformation is not new,” she said. “We’ve heard of people sitting in DMVs [Department of Motor Vehicles offices] listening for different languages and then notifying the local board of elections [to complain} about that person trying to register without knowing their citizenship status.” (Thanks to the "motor voter" program, people are asked while getting driver's license whether they'd also like to register to vote).

Both women agreed that there’s “serious potential” for violence post-election, regardless of who wins. They also predicted court challenges to outcomes in some counties.

Both also agreed that we’re fortunate in Pennsylvania to have Al Schmidt, Secretary of State, in charge of elections statewide. He was famously maligned in 2020 when the “bad things happen in Philadelphia” message became widespread. Schmidt, an elected Republican city commissioner, worked day and night to certify and defend the election results in Philadelphia. That led to him and his family being threatened with violence.

Cristella said that, following the attempted assassination of former president Trump, the Pennsylvania legislature began discussing ways to bring down the threat of political violence.

The two election reform advocates reviewed other initiatives to protect and improve voting in Pennsylvania.

Cristella said that David Thornburgh, former executive director of the Seventy, has chaired an effort called Ballot PA, to explore the benefits of open primaries. In open primaries, independents are not excluded from voting. Under the current regime of primaries limited only to voters previously registered for a given party, Widestrom said about 1.3 million Pennsylvania residents are barred from voting in springtime elections.

Ballot PA's advocacy has resulted in bipartisan open primary bills in both the state House and Senate. The House bill passed out of committee and is expected to be voted on by the full house.

To safeguard the integrity of the election process, Widestrom urged people to be very careful about sharing posts they see on social media and about believing what they read on those platforms.

That said, Widestrom cautioned against assuming assume those that do share misinformation have nefarious intentions, “People assume those posters aren’t critical thinkers. Research has shown they’re just people who typically share a lot of social media all the time. They tend to fall prey to the anxiety of the 24-hour news cycle, so they feel that have to keep sharing information without vetting it. Simply put, don’t do that.”

Both women urged voters to volunteer as poll workers, an effort being led in part by the Philadelphia Bar Association. Cristella said the need is especially critical in the Northeast and Southwest Philly.

Many have heard fears about “vigilante watchers” possibly intimidating in-person voters. Cristella said we largely can put that fear to rest: “We’re not going to have poll watchers swarm us from Butler County.”

To be a party-affiliated poll watcher In Pennsylvania (a different role from a nonpartisan poll worker), you have to be a registered voter in that county, she explained. So, only locals qualify for that partisan, day-of-the-election job.

“We need everyone to know what the rules are,” she said. “The city GOP is as freaked out by the idea of vigilante poll watchers as the rest of us. So, we’re doing training around this issue as no one wants to see chaos at the polls on Election Day.”

The election scene this year is unfortunately confusing and anxiety-inducing. The good news is that organizations like the Committee of 70 and the League of Women Voters offer average citizens 24-7 access to factual information about elections while being ready to respond quickly to abuses or false rumors.

“We can spin up pretty quickly when we see something happening. For example, if someone is challenging drop boxes, we have a non-partisan multi-faceted response to issues like that,” Widestrom said. “At the local level, there are two dozen groups working together every week, every day and they’re all getting the hang of it.”

Cristella echoed that sentiment: “There’s no longer naiveté about what is possible and what can go wrong around elections. The price of democracy is eternal vigilance.”