At last night's meeting of NorCo Council, Executive Lamont McClure defended plans to open two satellite elections offices - one in Washington Tp and one in South Bethlehem - to enable voters to request a "ballot on demand" instead of having to come to the courthouse. In last year's presidential race, over 7,000 people visited the courthouse for a "ballot on demand," which enables a voter to request a mail-in ballot in person and then complete it on the spot. NorCo GOP Chair Geissinger and Charles Baltic, an attorney who lives in Upper Mount Bethel Township, earlier this week threatened the elections commission with a lawsuit over the establishment of satellite offices.
Geissinger asked County Council "to do all that you can within your power to put the brakes on this runaway administration and it's ill-conceived notion that for some reason, we need to put an on-demand satellite office in a polling precinct that had a whopping turnout of 44 voters in the municipal primary that just concluded."
He blasted plans for a satellite office in South Bethlehem, which he described as "the one place in the county, that probably is most open to transient individuals, not properly registered, or possibly registered in two locations to vote in Northampton County, and thus disenfranchises the very citizens who pay taxes so that you can represent them, so that this building can stand, so that all of the services, the hundreds of millions of dollars of services that our citizens require, that you oversee, can be disenfranchised by an administration that has once again proven that election integrity is nowhere on its list of priorities.
"Mr. McClure has failed multiple times to run good elections.
"Use your authority and your power to ensure he doesn't do it again."
McClure responded that of the 7,000 people who requested a "ballot on demand" at the courthouse during the presidential race, 62% were Republican.
"They were registered Republicans, so we know we have actual empirical data that suggests that the people who like to vote in person on paper are Republicans.
"So there's no partisan motivation for us doing this.
"Why we're doing this is on the south side, and then we'll talk about Washington Township.
"And by the way, Washington Township has one of the largest precincts in Northampton County.
"And that is overwhelmingly Republican.
"And we're not considering that at all.
"We're considering that as a place where people can go to vote on demand.
"One of the things about the on demand site in the south side of Bethlehem, now that we know that it's Republicans who like to vote in person on demand early, maybe the Republicans from Lower Saucon Township or Hellertown Borough will turn out even in greater numbers to go vote in person on demand early at this new site on the south side of Bethlehem.
"So there was absolutely no partisan motivation whatsoever.
"But what our site on the south side of Bethlehem was meant to do?
McClure said it would combat election interference. He noted that, during the Presidential race, the NorCo GOP Vice Chair "was routinely interfering with the judge of elections who we've demonstrated had some of his own issues that day, routinely interfering with the judge of elections throughout the day, so that line continued to be slow." People who lined up to vote there waited as long as six hours, according to national news outlets.
"So part of our reaction is part of the reason we're doing this in preparation of the next presidential election is beginning the process to perfect the process, so we never have a situation like we had at the banana factory."
We're gonna' make sure we completely rule that out.
He added that Washington Township supervisors "are considering our plan to have an on demand in person site there.
"The supervisors approve it, we'll be there, and we'll be happy to be there."
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