Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

Consider this juxtaposition in Tuesday’s paper.

Story one: Luzerne County Chief Public Defender Steven Greenwald announced the stunning decision to stop providing representation for non-incarcerated citizens charged with misdemeanors. His office is supposed to be staffed with 28 attorneys, including himself, but eight positions are vacant. Greenwald bluntly blames the low pay offered by the county, and says he has “no realistic expectations” of filling the posts.

Story two: In what can only be described at this point as a partisan obsession of a few Luzerne County Council members, Council is yet again facing the issue of ballot drop boxes, with Councilman Brian Thornton pushing for introduction of an (almost certainly illegal) ordinance that would outright ban drop boxes in the county. “I’d be willing to go to court over that,” Thornton said, clearly showing a profound irony deficiency.

So, County Council can’t be bothered to assure public defender salaries are sufficient to provide defense for those who can’t afford it, but wants to throw as much money as needed at the unproven danger of drop boxes. Meanwhile, maybe one of those people denied a public defender might find a lawyer willing to sue the county over failure to provide representation in court, and we can spend more money on that.

It’s well worth recapping the time-draining effort council has already poured into the black hole of the drop box debate. Hours of public and council comment consumed much of the August meeting, thanks to Councilman Stephen J. Urban’s proposed ordinance to ban the use of county staff and resources to deliver boxes to approved sites. Then Council voted against the ordinance.

That’s hours, one assumes, which could have been used to address real, proven problems on council’s plate.

To be clear, we readily acknowledge drop boxes have the potential to contribute to voter fraud. Handled properly, it’s a minuscule potential, but it exists. But then, every voting system has a potential for fraud. Contrary to what some politicians would have you believe, there is no such thing as a fraud-proof voting system. No matter what is put in place, politicians who want to play the election security card can always find something else to criticize.

There are, however, many ways to protect against fraud and to detect when it occurs. Most of those safeguards are already in place, which is why experts declared the 2020 election the most secure in the nation’s history, and why sixty-some court cases filed in an effort to discredit the results were rejected.

Drop boxes, like mail-in ballots, have been used for years without incident, in red and blue states. Oregon became the first state to vote entirely by mail, and that was more than two decades ago. Where was all the outrage then?

If drop boxes are truly a danger to democracy, Thornton and his allies need to actually and conclusively prove it, not simply declare it. In fact, we humbly suggest voters and election security would be better served if county council accepted the independent election board’s decision regarding drop box use and put as much effort into increasing confidence in them as some have put into trying to undermine their use.

Then they could move on to the problems that aren’t potential, but quite real. Maybe start by making sure we have enough public defenders and other essential workers.

— Times Leader