1 week Ago By Editorial Board
Potentially adding a new style of drop box for voters to use in Luzerne County this year may start to help accomplish what is most necessary to get past these last few contentious years: A renewed faith in a system vital to upholding democracy. Luzerne County officials are planning to implement the new drop box with “several innovative security measures and chain of custody advancements” for the May primary, with a public demonstration of the box’s capabilities at 1 p.m.
on Thursday at Penn Place, 20 N. Pennsylvania Ave., Wilkes-Barre.
The product of an Arizona-based company, the box has a camera that snaps a photograph of voters returning envelopes, and scanners that capture an image of the envelope and its corresponding number . It is meant to provide quicker updates for voters and a more certain chain of custody for election officials. One thing that should be clear about election security, though: There is far more concern about the possibility of voter fraud in our elections than there is actual proof that it has any effect on them.
Yet, no matter how many statistics backing that stance that officials can pile up — The Associated Press found fewer than 500 cases of potential fraud among 25.5 million votes cast in six battleground states , including Pennsylvania, during the 2020 general election, for example — fear an election can be rigged by a few bad actors persists. Last November, an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found nearly 60 percent of Americans were concerned about potential fraud in the 2024 election, numbers surely bolstered by then-Republican candidate and current President Donald Trump’s baseless insistence that victory in the 2020 election was “stolen” from him by an influx of fraudulent votes.
Locally, concerns were felt most throughout Luzerne County, where County Manager Romilda Crocamo decided two months ahead of the election last November to bar ballot drop boxes from being used ahead of the Nov. 5 vote due to security concerns. She reversed that decision after a reminder from the state attorney general that only the county election board can make that call, but it stood out as the main talking point in a months-long lead-up to the election that showed just how skittish the county is when it comes to voter fraud.
An easy argument could be made that doing anything to change the current system would qualify as little more than a waste of time and money. However, the country can’t abide many more unwarranted election controversies of the kind that persisted long after the 2020 results were proven fair and free. The new drop box doesn’t deny any legal voter the opportunity to cast their ballot ahead of Election Day; In fact, it likely encourages more of them to use the service.
So for those reasons alone, it is worth a look. But the best reason to try it, and the one that should place the eyes of election officials regionwide on Luzerne County come May, is the potential it has to alleviate most of the nonsensical talk of rampant fraud that is poisoning the political well. The technology addresses many of the concerns critics say they have about the current drop boxes, and the hope is that it will help most people take the complaints of fraud for what they’ve always been: Political posturing, and not germane to the security of our elections.
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