EASTON, Pa. — With Pennsylvania’s election results officially certified, Northampton County officials reflected on the November vote during a meeting of county council’s election integrity committee last week.
Looking toward the future, Registrar Chris Commini recommended against buying additional voting machines to combat long lines, and asked state legislators to let county elections departments begin opening mail-in ballots before Election Day.
In all, 179,723 Northampton County residents — 76% of the county’s registered voters — participated in the November general election. Of those voters, 60,368 cast a ballot by mail, down from nearly 74,000 in 2020.
That reduction may come from higher-than-average use of mail-in ballots in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Commini said.
In general, members of county council said Thursday, last month’s vote went smoothly, with one exception: extraordinarily long lines at a handful of polling places where college students vote.
Bethlehem’s Third Ward polling place, located at the Banana Factory, saw lines longer than six hours. The site chiefly serves students at Lehigh University; a polling place in Easton where Lafayette College students vote also reported unusually long waits.
"We had enough machines, we had enough people, we had enough staff. It’s just volume.”Chris Commini, county elections registrar
During the day, officials sent out nine of the county’s 10 backup voting machines to combat the long lines or replace malfunctioning units.
Last month, county officials attributed delays first and foremost to higher-than-predicted participation among college students. The surge “could not have been predicted by the registrar,” said Director of Administration Nicole Pietrzak.
“We had unprecedented turnout for this election,” said Commini. “I’m not sure there's much more we can do. We had enough machines, we had enough people, we had enough staff. It’s just volume.”
Officials allocated voting machines and other resources based largely on turnout in 2020, when many classes at both Lehigh and Lafayette were held online. In the 2020 election, the worst-affected precincts logged the lowest turnout of any in the county.
Both precincts were primed to see an explosion in turnout if students’ voting habits returned to something more closely resembling the pre-pandemic norm.
County officials responsible for managing elections have also pointed to plenty of other causes for the lines.
Banana Factory blame
After the committee meeting Thursday, Pietrzak laid blame at the feet of the judge of elections running the precinct, who she did not name, saying he “was observed to lack a sense of urgency or ability to efficiently manage the polling location.”
County Executive Lamont McClure, meanwhile, previously accused Northampton County Republican Committee Vice Chair Andrew Azan, who was present as a poll watcher at the Banana Factory for part of the day, with intentionally slowing down operations there.
The Republican Committee’s chairman, Glenn Geissinger, said Azan only arrived after the long line had already formed, and could not have caused the delays.
“I would attribute some of it to the weather,” Commini said of the long lines. “It was a really nice day.”
With lower-turnout municipal and midterm elections on the horizon, Commini said, it does not make sense to buy additional voting machines for at least another three years.
In part thanks to the lower number of mail ballots, county workers finished counting votes shortly after 1 a.m. on Nov. 6, earlier than Election Day 2020.
Still, Commini said, results would be available sooner if the Pennsylvania Legislature changed current laws to allow elections workers to remove the mail ballots from their outer envelopes before polls open on Election Day.
“Pre-canvassing is definitely top of the list,” when it comes to requests for the state Legislature, and even three days’ head start would make a difference, he said.
