Friday afternoon, the Judge of Elections for Wilkins Township Karen Toft, told Wendy Bell about a possible change to the way votes will be counted in the primary election in Allegheny County due to the Coronavirus outbreak.
"I wanted the general public to know that there's a possibility that when they vote in person at the primary this year, their vote may not be counted because it's not gonna be scanned, which means it can't be confirmed and you won't be getting a receipt," said Toft.
"We got new machines and instead of using the touch-screen with the electionic choices, everyone's gonna get a paper ballot, who goes to the polls in person. And then, after you fill out the paper ballot you're supposed to put it into the scanner and on the screen is supposed to say 'thank you for voting, your vote has been counted' and then the scanner will print out a receipt," explained Toft. "This year, the scanners aren't even gonna be at the polling places. They're going to be at the warehouse over on the North Side. So I was told by the election department that all of these paper ballots are gonna be collected into a box and then driven over to the warehouse and someone over there is gonna scan them."
When asked if there would be bipartisan oversight of the ballot scanning at the warehouse, Toft told Wendy "We have no idea whose gonna be scanning them, and not only that, I was told by the election department that I called that since the polling places are gonna be consolidated, they're not gonna need as many workers, so even though I'm an elected judge, they may not need me. So I don't even know who the judges are gonna be and whether they're Republican or Democrat, so we don't know what kind of representation that we're going to be getting."
In addition, the envelopes to be used for mail-in voting will apparently feature a label indicating whether a voter is a Republican or Democrat. Toft told Bell, "I was told Republican or Democratic label will be on those and that would be very easy for someone to just pull out the specific party one that they don't want. That's just such an easy opportunity for voter fraud."
Wendy told Karen that a woman wokring in listen maintenance for Monroeville is reviewing the voter rolls for Monroeville discovered voters with birthdays dating back to the 1800s. Karen said she could believe that because "on my own rolls, I have people that have been dead for years."
Karen had shared a suggestion for voters - "Everyone take a photograph of your ballot before you give it to the official and if you haven't already mailed it in, take a photograph of your ballot."
