A version of this conversation aired during Morning Edition on WVIA Radio.
Ballot drop boxes will be available for voters in Luzerne County — at least for this election.
In a 3-2 vote last week, the county's board of elections voted to keep drop boxes and ended a recent back-and-forth over them that started when county Manager Romilda Crocamo decided to remove them.
WVIA's Sarah Scinto and Roger DuPuis have been following the drop box battle from the start.
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SARAH: So let's go over how we got here. It's been a bit of a saga. So this all started Sept. 18 when Crocamo decided not to deploy any drop boxes in the county. She cited security concerns as her reasoning. We've had rallies, we've had a lawsuit, we've had a letter from the state Attorney General, and just this week, the motion to eliminate drop boxes for the 2024 general election was defeated at the Board of Elections meeting. So what do you make of all of this back and forth over these drop boxes? And do you think ... as someone who's covered Luzerne County for some time, from your perspective, did this engender any voter confusion?
ROGER: I think it could, right? I mean, I think it's going to cause some people who maybe did not have a strong opinion about drop boxes to question whether or not they are safe, even though, of course, the evidence shows that they have been. And certainly it's going to make ... folks who only think about these issues in the lead up to election day a little more nervous, right? I mean, a lot of folks, they take these things for granted. They show up when ... it's time to show up. They send the ballot when it's time to send the ballot, but they don't spend as much time thinking about it as you and I do. It certainly doesn't help make things more clear for folks.
SARAH: Now, going back to where this all started, which was Romilda Crocamo's decision, it seemed to be surprising for quite a lot of people in the county that she would (do) this and cite her power over county personnel and county property as the reasoning. What do you make of the quick response that we saw from the ACLU, from In This Together NEPA, and other organizations either supporting her decision or condemning it?
ROGER: I will say, I think the key thing, the telling thing, was that the state Attorney General's office responded so quickly. Now, they had a request. They had a request from Romilda Crocamo, and they had a request from State Senator Marty Flynn to investigate the issue. You know, credit to Romilda, who actually wrote to the state attorney general and said, if you have concerns about the way I've handled this, please look into it. And they did, and they did so very quickly. And I think the letter back from Attorney General Michelle Henry was unambiguous: You must deploy these boxes. The law says that the election board has the sole authority over elections of the county, including the boxes, and if you fail to do so, you could face legal sanctions. So it was sort of surprising to me, because Crocamo is ... by profession an attorney, that she would take a stance that does seem, according to the AG and other folks we talked to, so much at odds with the county's Home Rule charter and what the law says about how elections are supposed to operate. So I wasn't surprised at the quick reaction at all, no.
SARAH: Now one thing that was maybe a little bit surprising for me was the loud opposition to the drop boxes. Romilda from the beginning has said that this is not an indictment of drop boxes. She had concerns about the security of the boxes themselves, not anything about voter fraud or vote tampering. She was concerned about security, but the people who were in support of her decision were mostly talking about those issues. Now, Luzerne County had started using ballot drop boxes, like many other places in the country, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Do you recall this much controversy then?
ROGER: No, and to be honest with you, as we were preparing for this interview, I went back and looked and the real controversy in Luzerne County in 2020 as you may recall, was a number of ballots that accidentally were thrown away by a contractor. And all the stories seem to go back to that. I think there was general anxiety from some folks about mail-in voting, and there was a little bit of partisan debate about it, but I don't think it really took off until after that election, which Donald Trump lost. The folks on the right then, I think, started to become much more concerned about drop boxes. In particular, we were hearing, you know, allegations of fraud, which were never proven, allegations of people, you know, harvesting ballots and so forth. But leading up to the election, it was not an issue to the extent we are seeing now. In fact ... the mail-in ballot law was a bipartisan piece of legislation that both parties in Harrisburg agreed to when it was passed in 2019.
SARAH: We did have four drop boxes in Luzerne County for the primary election, we will now have two at county owned buildings — those being Penn Place (Wilkes-Barre) and the Broad Street exchange in Hazleton. So this is for the general election, specifically this year. But do we think that this issue is going to continue to be fought over in subsequent elections?
ROGER: That's so interesting. You know, as we were talking about as recently as last night ... there was a vote on the election board to consider, once again, eliminating these boxes, and once again that vote failed. Bit I think the opponents are going to keep trying. What's really interesting is that former President Trump was in Scranton (last week) ... and one of the things he said to his faithful supporters, was we need to be doing more mail-in voting. So he, I think, sort of correctly sees that this is something that is not going to go away. Whether or not the boxes remain is an open question. I think the folks who oppose them for their own reasons are going to keep opposing them.
SARAH: So we've both talked with the county manager, Romida, about this issue, and she has repeatedly cited security concerns, not an indictment of drop boxes. But what do you think brought this decision on in the first place?
ROGER: Listen, it's a hyper-partisan environment we're living in. There's a lot of anger, really, on both sides, and the folks who oppose drop boxes are exceptionally angry about them. When I interviewed Romilda, she said, and I quote, "I'm not caving to the forces of fear at all. I make the decisions that are best for Luzerne County." And she also said to me that as an individual, she supports drop boxes, but this is not about the individual. She really felt that security was an issue. And one of the things I think you touched on earlier was that some of the non-county buildings that were hosting drop boxes maybe weren't able to provide the level of security that we would have liked. But Romilda also talked about, you know, the risks to the staff who maintain the boxes. And I thought that was a very telling thing. On the one hand, she's saying, okay, listen, I'm not giving in to the forces of fear, but she's worried about her employees actually being able to do their jobs in a safe manner. I think there was a mention about some of the threats that have taken place in other parts of the country. And so you know, you do have to wonder how much the anger toward drop boxes and some of the very false statements that have been made about fraud involving these boxes entered into her calculations.
SARAH: Seems like we can't get through an election here in Luzerne County without some sort of controversy, but you can rest assured that we will both be on it as it comes. Roger, thank you so much for joining us.
ROGER: Thank you Sarah.
