DELAWARE COUNTY (KYW Newsradio) — Voters at a handful of Delaware County precincts were given until 9 p.m. to cast their ballots Tuesday night after a bomb threat at Radnor High School forced officials to change polling locations.
Police said about 100 people inside were evacuated as a precaution but insisted there was no immediate threat. The school was open for classes on Wednesday. However, election officials fear the negative experience could deter people from voting in the future.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt says polling locations may need to be relocated for various reasons.
"A gas company tearing up, doing construction right outside, preventing voters from entering,” he said. “Or a water main break or any number of things that sometimes require polling places to be moved."
But Schmidt says a bomb threat is one of the more serious reasons to change a polling location on Election Day. The mechanics of moving a polling place are the same regardless of what issue.
Temple University Political Science Professor Dr. Michael Sances says dealing with a bomb threat while trying to take part in the democratic process could be enough to make people not want to return.
"People start to vote and then they keep voting, and if there's an interruption to that process there's a risk that people break that habit, and that might carry over into the next election," he said.
Voting was extended until 9 p.m. after polling was moved from Radnor High School to the elementary school, but Dr. Sances says there may be grounds for a lawsuit if people were told they could not vote and were turned away. Sances says threats of violence on Election Day are an unfortunate sign of the times.
"We know that in the last election, there were concerns about violence at the polls and while we didn't see much of that we certainly saw election violence after the election,” he said. “So this is all the specifics of this case aside, it makes us think about that."