MEDIA, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — The Trump campaign and national GOP leaders are jumping on a viral video, showing a woman being removed from a Delaware County voter services center in handcuffs on Monday, as evidence of suppression of conservative voters. County officials say that happened only after a number of people waiting in line for on-demand mail-in ballots told police the woman was causing a disturbance and felt like she was harassing them.
“Our park police, after receiving complaints, asked the individual to stop and be cordial and polite in the line and no more electioneering,” said Delaware County Council Chairwoman Monica Taylor.
Taylor said the same rules and laws apply, whether it's at a polling place or a line of people lines for on-demand mail-in ballots. She said the woman, Val Biancaniello, continued her behavior, despite multiple requests to stop, and eventually she was taken out in handcuffs.
“It's our responsibility to ensure that people are able to vote safely and without intimidation or harassment,” said Taylor. “No one is trying to mislead anyone. No one is trying to influence the election. We want to make sure that everyone votes and that they are able to exercise that right to vote, and to do it in a manner where they are not being harassed or intimidated into voting for any particular candidate.”
Eventually the video was shared by Michael Whatley, chair of the Republican National Committee, and it has been seen more than 2.5 million times.
The Trump campaign also claimed voter services workers were telling people to leave at the center in Delaware County, but Taylor said the main office in Media has had very long lines, and voter services workers were telling people about shorter lines at satellite offices.
“If they wanted to go to one of those services centers, the line was shorter at those locations, but they were completely able to stay and wait in line and vote there,” said Taylor.
A dust-up over early voting
Pennsylvania's clumsy and time-consuming early voting option is creating frustration, leading to hours-long lines and prompting claims of disenfranchisement as voters swamp county offices that are not prepared to handle the influx.
The confusion is partly a result of a law that the Pennsylvania Legislature (then controlled by Republicans) passed just before the pandemic, and partly from crowds of Republican voters heeding calls by their party and former President Donald Trump to vote early. Trump's entreaties to his supporters to cast ballots before the Nov. 5 election come after he repeatedly attacked forms of early voting in previous years.
In Bucks County, often seen as a political bellwether, voters waited up to three hours on Tuesday, the final day to apply for a mail ballot.
Why the change from four years ago when relatively few voters tried to apply for early ballots in person?
"Because he told us to vote early. I was just trying to make it 'too big to rig,'" said Marlene Burns, 52, repeating one of Trump's standard lines encouraging his supporters to vote. "So yeah, that's why I'm voting at the courthouse and wanted to have my vote in person."
The early voting angst is the latest dustup over voting in Pennsylvania, which has the largest trove of electoral votes of any battleground state and is by far the state most visited by the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets this year. The runup to Election Day in the state has been marked by numerous battles over mail ballots, some landing on the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court.
A culprit in this latest controversy is a law, passed in 2019 by the Republican-controlled Legislature, in an attempt to expand mail-in voting. They created a system for early voting very different than that in most states, where registered voters can go to an office in their county and cast a ballot before Election Day.
Instead, in a practice known as "on-demand mail voting," Pennsylvania voters can show up at their county government offices, request a mail-in ballot and then fill out an application. That form has to be reviewed to make sure the person is an eligible voter and then approved. Once that happens, a ballot has to be printed.
It's a process that can take about 12 minutes per voter, if everything goes right. Voters have the option of filling out the ballot on the spot and turning it in, taking it home, or asking that it get mailed to their house. If they don't fill out the ballot right away, they can return it through the U.S. Postal Service or place it in a drop box.
County election officials say they need more funding to hire staff to help with on-demand early voting and are trying to accommodate the surge of voters. Compounding the problem is that offices have just a single printer especially designed for the early in-person ballots, which include inner and outer envelopes.
"It's an uncertain process for a lot of people because it's still relatively new, and it's also kind of inefficient," said Bucks County Board of Elections Chairman Bob Harvie in an interview. "There's definitely changes that need to be made."
Harvie said he would like to see a change in state law that would allow voters to check a box to automatically receive a mail ballot every year, instead of being forced to apply for one with each election.
But Pennsylvania's politically split state government has largely stalemated over modernizing election laws since 2019.
Responding to criticism and misinformation on social media, the Bucks County government said every voter in line by 5 p.m. Tuesday would be allowed to apply for a mail ballot. The secretary of state's office issued a statement affirming that and had this advice for voters: "Please be patient."
Other suburban counties assured early voters that they would have a chance to apply for their ballots by the Tuesday evening deadline.
As the early voting period drew to a close, Republican lawmakers said in a letter to Bucks County officials that they had fielded complaints from voters about the county office closing over the weekend while people were still in line to apply for a mail-in ballot. In a statement posted to its website, Bucks County said it may need to stop taking applicants "to ensure all applications are processed by the end of the day."
Harvie acknowledged confusion over the state's early voting system.
"When you're told that, yes, you can go do early voting by someone, and then you show up and you're told, well, no, you can't do early voting — you know, voters aren't sure who to believe," he said.