Pennsylvania’s first general election under new rules and with record-breaking turnout recorded few major problems, a coalition of voting advocates reported Wednesday.
The coalition placed thousands of volunteers at polling locations across the state to assist voters and deter any intimidation.
There were long lines in some precincts, including one in East Manchester Township in York County where some voters waited more than four hours to cast ballots. A voter also reported waiting three hours at the Christian Life Assembly Church in Camp Hill.
But voters weren’t turned away in droves.
Some polling places opened late and other voters who don’t speak English as their first language struggled with access at some precincts, the advocates said. But people still had their chance to vote.
“We saw an election day that looked in many ways very similar to other election days,” said Suzanne Almeida, interim executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania. “We also saw some serious issues with the presence of armed constables at polling locations, which is legal, but it does have a suppressive effect on voters and affects the tenor of the election.”
Nearly 500 volunteer advocates went to 126 polling stations Tuesday to help make election day go as smoothly as possible, said Elizabeth Alex, chief of organizing and leadership for CASA. They concentrated their efforts on locations with high numbers of first-time voters or those who might need language translation services.
“Our volunteers interpreted for more than 20 people at one poll and faced resistance every time,” Alex said, but everyone was able to vote. Still, she said the process was harder than it needed to be, and it’s something her organization plans to work to fix.
Voter guardians from Center for Popular Democracy and other groups also showed up at hundreds of precincts in 13 counties, including Dauphin, York and Lancaster, to reduce harm and protect against possible intimidation by right-wing militias, a fear that didn’t pan out.
Instead, they received complaints about armed constables wearing bullet-resistant vests and sometimes yelling at voters or directing them to different entrances.
“We were able to not have a lot of incidents when it came to right-wing militias, in good part because of the those folks who put their bodies on the line and were at polling locations yesterday,” said said Salewa Ogunmefun, Civic Engagement & Political Manager, Center for Popular Democracy. “But we shouldn’t have to do that.”
Many voters appreciated the guardians' presence and the free pizza they provided when lines got excessively long, Ogunmefun said. She said the guardians were trained in de-escalation tactics and had to intervene at times when poll workers improperly asked repeat voters, mostly migrants, for identification.
“What we saw statewide, there were a couple of flags,” she said, adding that a lot of potential problems were remedied at the scene.
Sara Rose, an attorney from the ACLU, noted that the general election was the first since changes from Act 77, an election reform law which allowed all voters to mail-in ballots because of the pandemic and gave voters more time to register to vote.
There was some confusion because of the new rules, including people who showed up with mail-in ballots who wanted to vote at the polls or with mistakes in filling in mail-in ballots, but “it was ultimately handled pretty well,” Rose said of the election.
Voters were allowed to register 14 days before the election instead of the normal span of 30 days, but it didn’t cause any problems, Rose said. Instead, her agency saw far fewer complaints this year from voters about their names missing from the poll books.
“The counties were able to make sure that those people appeared in the poll books and it actually seemed like it worked a lot better in fact than in the past,” she said.
Rose said they heard scattered complaints about poll workers not wearing masks, but counties generally were helpful in reminding workers to wear them.
A polling station in Wilkes Barre in Luzerne County moved “without sufficient notice to voters,” said Ray Murphy, State Coordinator, Keystone Votes.
His organization forced the county to put signs at the old location and they sent text messages to voters in that precinct to alert them to the change.
His group also began working last year to expand voting by mail options, even before the pandemic. Those efforts proved helpful, Murphy said, because “this election wouldn’t have been possible without vote by mail.”
Murphy commended the “heroic efforts” by county officials and noted the “real heroes” are the voters who turned out in record numbers.
Almeida said there were positive and negatives from Tuesday’s election experience.
“An election is successful when every single eligible voter is able to cast their ballot and have equal access to a positive experience at the polling place,” she said. “We did not see that yesterday. That being said, we also did not see a disaster, right? We did not see voters turned away in large numbers... So while it’s far from perfect, we did have an election where people turned out and cast their ballots despite in some cases significant obstacles in doing so.”
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