How one northeast Pennsylvania county runs drama-free elections with just 2 people on staff
BLOOMSBURG — As counties around Pennsylvania toiled to count ballots on Tuesday — under pressure to report results within hours of primary polls closing — one rural northeast county put to work its creative solution for conquering such a big job with a small election staff.
Very small: two people.
The demands of processing ballots from Pennsylvania’s different methods of voting have led some county election officials to say they actually run two separate elections every cycle. The 2019 law that greatly expanded who can vote by mail does not prescribe a system by which counties must count their ballots, so counties each have designed different processes to accommodate one of the most consequential changes to the state’s elections in recent history.
Depending on the size of a county, its resources, and its county government politics, some approaches work better than others.
Columbia County, with fewer than 39,000 registered voters, realized it could only pull off its “two elections” more smoothly if the office got lots of extra help. Its election operation is now based on robust cooperation from employees across the county government.
“One of [counties’] core responsibilities is elections, and we have to do them well,” said County Commissioner Chris Young, a Republican whose job also puts him on Columbia’s Board of Elections. “My philosophy was — and the other two commissioners obviously support it — was all hands on deck. We don’t segregate it and say ‘Oh this is only election’s responsibility.’”
https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2023/05/columbia-county-primary-election-transparency-pennsylvania-2023/
