Luzerne County drops 17,420 voters

Luzerne County’s voter registration dropped by about 8% Wednesday due to a purging of inactive voters who did not cast ballots in at least two federal elections.

County Election Director Bob Morgan briefed the county Election Board on the purge during its meeting Wednesday and also provided an update on the use of mail ballot drop boxes in the May 18 primary. Meanwhile, the five-citizen volunteer election board voted to certify the primary election results.

On the issue of purging, a total 17,420 voters had their registrations cancelled due to inactivity, Morgan said.

This lowers the county’s registration from a state-reported 220,492 on June 14 to a new 203,072. With this more realistic figure, the 56,720 ballots cast in the recent primary actually equated to a turnout of 28% instead of the previous 25.7% based on the old voter count.

County Assistant Solicitor Michael Butera had said a blanket purge has not been completed since the county switched to a home rule government structure in 2012.

Judicial Watch Inc., a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, had informed the county May 3 it would file a complaint in 90 days if the county did not complete a purge as required by the National Voter Registration Act.

Morgan said he worked with the Pennsylvania Department of State to identify voters who should be purged. Based on state guidance, he removed the 17,420 because they had not voted for at least five years prior to November 2018 — or since, he said.

“It’s an effort to clean up the database and make sure everything is solid and secure,” Morgan said after Wednesday’s meeting.

Impacted voters had been informed of their inactive status in 2018, although it’s unclear why they had not been purged years ago, Morgan said. He believes most of the voters had relocated and failed to notify the county.

The impact of this number loss on specific political parties won’t be known until the registration cancellations are incorporated in updated voter breakdown reports. Under the pre-purge figures, the county had 105,632 Democrats, 86,076 Republicans and 28,784 voters who are unaffiliated or have other registrations.

Drop boxes

The election board had agreed to add three mail ballot drop boxes for the primary in addition to one previously available at the county’s Penn Place building in downtown Wilkes-Barre. The other boxes were inside the Pittston Memorial Library and the city halls in Hazleton and Nanticoke.

More than 3,200 voters turned in their ballots through the drop boxes instead of mailing them, Morgan told the board. In total, 17,300 mail ballots were cast in the primary.

The Penn Place box was the most popular, with 2,000 ballots deposited, he said. The ballot count was 700 in Pittston, 350 in Nanticoke and 190 in Hazleton, he said.

Board members said they would monitor use of the drop boxes to determine their number and location in future elections.

Certification

Four election board members — Denise Williams, Richard Nardone, Audrey Serniak and Kathryn Roth — voted to certify, or officially approve, the primary election results in municipal and county races.

Fifth member Missy Thomas abstained. When Chairman Williams asked the reason, Thomas said it had nothing to do with any concerns about election issues. Instead, Thomas said she was abstaining because she was unable to participate in the election adjudication process as extensively as her board colleagues.

Leading up to the certification vote, Williams said the election drew a higher turnout compared to other recent primaries and that an audit of 1,800 ballots yielded a 99.9% accuracy score. That testing of 3.15% of ballots exceeded the state’s 2% audit requirement, officials said.

Of the 56,720 voters, 24 sent the board emails expressing concerns or complaints about an error that caused Republican ballots to be mislabeled as Democratic ones on the electronic ballot marking devices at polling places, she said.

Officials determined the Republican ballots were correct, despite the header error, and all voters had the opportunity to review their printed ballots for accuracy before they scanned them into a tabulator to be recorded, she said.

The county also issued a press release and alerted poll workers upon discovering the heading error, and voters had the option to cast provisional or emergency ballots if they were still concerned about the machines, she said. In total, 106 Republicans and 116 Democrats used provisional ballots.

“I’m confident in the validity of the May 2021 primary election results,” Williams said, noting she was actively involved in throughout the election.

Nardone concurred.

“Having been there throughout, I agree with everything you said,” he told Williams.