PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Chester County has appointed a West Chester-based law firm to investigate the omission of more than 75,000 third-party voters from Election Day poll books. That's a little less than one-fifth of the county's electorate.
Government CEO David Byerman said Fleck Eckert Klein McGarry, LLC, will be tasked with figuring out why third-party voters didn't appear in poll books at any of Chester County's 230 polling locations. Affected voters included those registered as Independent, Libertarian, Green Party, Non-Partisan, and no affiliation.
Investigators plan to talk with people involved in the poll book preparation, review and distribution. They'll also look at internal communications within the Department of Voter Services.
The firm will hand in a written report by Dec. 19. A public presentation is planned at a Chester County Board of Elections meeting in mid-to-late January. That meeting will be in the evening to encourage public participation.
Nearly 13,000 provisional ballots had to be cast in Chester County on Nov. 4. Polls in the county stayed open two extra hours. There were 385,856 total registered voters in the county on Election Day.
“We deeply regret the errors that occurred on and before Election Day, and through this review, we commit to identifying the root causes of the problem and ensuring that it does not happen again,” Byerman said.