Pennsylvania swing county to keep ballot drop boxes after controversy

Source: The Guardian

Mon 7 Oct 2024 12.46 EDT


A battleground county in north-eastern Pennsylvania will have ballot drop boxes this fall after its county manager faced pressure and reversed her decision to eliminate them. The announcement on Friday came less than a month after Romilda Crocamo, the county manager in Luzerne county, said she was getting rid of the county’s four drop boxes over concerns the county could not secure them.

“I cannot secure the drop boxes. And, you know, sometimes I have to make difficult decisions,” she said in an interview last month. But voting rights groups sued Crocamo last week, saying she could not unilaterally get rid of the drop boxes.

Elections in the county are jointly overseen by a five-member board of elections who are responsible for setting election policies, and the county manager, who is responsible for personnel. A hearing in the case had been scheduled for Monday. Voters in the state – a critical one for both Kamala Harris and Joe Biden – have already begun receiving and returning mail-in ballots.

Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Michelle Henry, sent a letter to Crocamo advising her that county board of elections had the power to set policies over drop boxes. An agreement filed on Sunday in the Luzerne county court of common pleas says Crocamo does not concede she is under a legal obligation to deploy drop boxes, but that she won’t block their deployment this election cycle. “This is a huge victory for Luzerne county voters,” said Alisha Hoffman-Mirilovich, the executive director of In This Together NEPA, which sued the county over drop boxes.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/07/voting-drop-boxes-luzerne-pennsylvania

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As a note, Luzerne County is home to Wilkes-Barre, a city close in proximity to Joe Biden's hometown of Scranton (the latter being in a different County), and is part of a "Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Metro" area.