How to Rig a Northampton County Election

A few months ago, I ranted here and at Northampton County Council about Walter R. Garvin, aka Wally G, and his multiple roles as local Democratic party officer, partisan radio show host and elections commission chair. I argued there's an appearance of impropriety when the chair of a quasijudicial body like the elections commission is actively involved in local party politics.

Councilman Lamont McClure disagreed, and challenged me to state specifically how an elections commission chair could rig an election. Fortunately, Garvin came to his senses and resigned his position in the local Democratic party. But Tuesday's election demonstrates several ways in which an elections chair, with a little help from elections officials, could easily rig an election.

First, you can manipulate the number of machines available at different precincts to ensure that you can vote quickly in one and stand in line in another. In Palmer, for example, one precinct with over a thousand voters waited in long lines to vote on only two machines while another precinct with fewer voters had twice as many machines. Why is that? If someone wants to suppress a heavy Democratic or Republican vote in a particular precinct, he can just make sure it doesn't have enough machines.

Second, the Palmer poll worker who told me about turning people away, also told me that the Advanced Voting Solutions touchscreen voting machines kept freezing. I repeatedly asked whether any votes were lost and he just doesn't know. But he told me he constantly had to slip some white card into these machines to reactivate them. This is disturbing. And when these machines constantly break down, voters walk away. That's another great way to suppress the vote, and may even have the added benefit of losing votes already cast.

Third, the Northampton County ballot on Tuesday was designed to encourage people to vote a straight party ticket. David Strout, in a letter to the editor, explains why this is so. "The initial screen just has a large blue 'Democrat' box and a large red 'Republican' box. In the upper left corner is a short phrase about voting a straight ticket. In the lower right corner, there is a 'next' button. Instead, there should be the phrase, 'If you do not want to vote a straight ticket, push the next button.'" On Tuesday, a Democrat who may have intended to split his ticket to vote for Dent may have actually voted for Dertinger as a result of this confusion. Democrat Dertinger actually beat Republican Dent by 127 votes in Northampton County. Is this because Northampton is that much more liberal than Lehigh or because its confusing ballot made it difficult for voters to split their ticket?

Finally, as noted in my earlier post, is the refusal to make provisional ballots available to those whose names fail to appear on the list. You could provide provisional ballots in precincts that are going your way, and just not mention them elsewhere.

Last Tuesday, all the conditions existed to permit a rigged election. Now, don't get me wrong. The problems I noted were pure happenstance. But real election fraud is only a matter of time unless (1) we insure that elections commission members are completely impartial, (2) provide for better training of poll workers, and (3) correct the completely foreseeable problems with the Advanced Voting system. I'll tell you about them in another post.