Northampton County officials point fingers over 6-hour voting line at Banana Factory

EASTON, Pa. — Northampton County officials are pointing fingers over extremely long Election Day lines at polling places that chiefly serve the county’s college students after turnout exploded compared with 2020.

Voters assigned to Bethlehem's Third Ward reported waiting up to six hours to cast their ballots at the Banana Factory, drawing attention from celebrities, party brass and county officials.

The long waits even prompted a lawsuit from the state and national Democratic committees, which sought to keep the polls open at the precinct beyond their typical 8 p.m. close.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which joined the lawsuit, said the Banana Factory saw one of the longest lines of any polling place in Pennsylvania.

Trouble began first thing Tuesday morning at the Banana Factory, which chiefly serves students of Lehigh University.

One of the precinct’s three voting machines failed to turn on, prompting elections officials to send over a replacement.

Over the course of Election Day, as the line outside wrapped around the block, officials gradually sent three more voting machines, extra pollbooks and additional personnel to run them.

Among the reinforcements was Stephen Barron, Northampton County’s director of fiscal affairs and a close ally of County Executive Lamont McClure.

Barron was tapped to temporarily run one of the precinct’s digital poll books, drawing the ire of county Republican officials.

Using a low reference point

The county also sent extra machines to a polling place in Easton that primarily serves students at Lafayette College on College Hill, McClure said.

To decide how many machines, poll workers and other resources each polling place should receive, officials looked to turnout data from the 2020 and 2022 elections, according to McClure.

In 2020, when many of Lehigh’s and Lafayette’s classes were moved online and students were remote, both the Easton and Bethlehem precincts that chiefly serve their students recorded strikingly low turnout compared with the rest of Northampton County.

Only about 30% of registered voters in each precinct cast ballots; every other polling place in the county logged at least 50% turnout, closer to the countywide average of 75% for 2020.

Using such a low reference point set up the county for an explosion in turnout if turnout returned to something more closely resembling pre-pandemic levels.

From 2020 to 2024, the Banana Factory precinct saw turnout nearly double, while turnout more than doubled at the Easton precinct at Kirby Sports Center where many Lafayette students vote.

“Both major colleges in Northampton County showed up in amazing numbers,” McClure said.

“I'm just not sure our registrar could have contemplated that the turnout would be so much greater than it had been in previous elections.”

Stephanie Kasulka

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LehighValleyNews.com

Party politics?

Some of the delay, McClure said, stems from direct partisan intervention.

He accused the vice chairman of the Northampton County Republican Committee, Andrew Azan, of intentionally slowing voting at the Banana Factory for part of the day Tuesday.

Barron said that while he was checking voters in, he noticed Azan frequently asking questions and making demands of the judge of elections overseeing the vote, which “kept distracting [the judge of elections] and slowing down that process.”

Azan “seemed to be going up to the election judge, constantly asking for clarification on things, talking about the students that were voting, getting in line ahead of the students and the citizens,” Barron said.

McClure said the stream of questions and interruptions appeared like an effort to “intentionally” create delays in a precinct that Democrats expected to carry handily.

“You had this Republican operative inside the polling place slowing things down repeatedly," McClure said. "I think it helps explain why that bottleneck occurred inside the polling place.”

According to county Republican Committee Chairman Glenn Geissinger, Azan did not arrive at the polling place until the long line had already formed, and could not have caused the delays.

More mundane factors

Barron also pointed to other, more mundane, factors behind the long lines.

Because so many of the voters at the Banana Factory were voting for the first time, he said, each took longer to cast a ballots than those in other precincts who had mostly used the voting machines before.

Poll workers at the Banana Factory also were checking in voters relatively slowly, creating another bottleneck, Barron said.

Some voters who registered to vote closer to the deadline had not made it into the poll books, he said, requiring workers to check their registration against Pennsylvania’s statewide database.

Geissinger, meanwhile, criticized the move to have Barron, a politically active county official who has worked on recent Democratic campaigns, working inside a polling place.

“It is not good optics for an administration that has had a problem with election integrity in the past,” he said.

McClure shot back that officials were doing everything they could to move voters through the polling place more quickly.

“We were throwing every asset we possibly could to help manage the historic turnout we had from the Lehigh students,” he said.

“What I think are bad optics is the vice chair [Azan] interfering with the movement in the polling place, helping to cause the long lines.”

The Banana Factory was the polling location for Bethlehem's 3rd Ward polling district.
According to unofficial results from Northampton County, votes were split as follows in the district:

Presidential race
Harris/Walz (D) 1,482 votes
Trump/Vance (R) 360 votes

U.S. House PA-07
Susan Wild (D) 1,439 votes
Ryan Mackenzie (R) 327 votes

U.S. Senate
Bob Casey (D) 1,373 votes
Dave McCormick (R) 349 votes

Politics reporter Tom Shortell contributed to this report.