Problems at the polls need to be addressed
As elections go, the balloting Tuesday in Pennsylvania, and in this area, wasn’t the most spine-tingling in history.
In the presidential races, Hillary Clinton rolled over Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side, and Donald Trump crushed his remaining rivals, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, on the Republican ballot. Until recently, there was some hope Pennsylvania might play a significant role in the Democratic race, but Sanders’ recent loss in New York seemed to take the wind out of the sails of some of his supporters. Sanders has been fighting against a stacked deck since entering the race, and it seems at this point that he’ll be little more than a sideshow as Clinton cruises toward the Democratic nomination. Trump’s bid for the Republican nod doesn’t seem quite as inevitable, but his wall-to-wall victories Tuesday in five states make it increasingly unlikely he can be derailed by the GOP establishment, barring some sort of backroom skulduggery at the party’s convention.
In statewide races, there also was little suspense. Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro cruised to a solid win over Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala for the Democratic nomination for attorney general, and the close race expected between Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Joe Sestak and Katie McGinty never materialized, with McGinty rolling to a clear win. Never discount the power of money in politics. McGinty had the Democratic establishment in her corner, and with that an influx of advertising paid for by outside groups. She may need to soothe hurt feelings among Sestak’s backers after those who were buying TV ads on her behalf took the low road in the closing weeks of the campaign. She’ll need every vote she can get in her bid to unseat Republican incumbent Pat Toomey in November.
Closer to home, there were a few tight races, most notably Joe Szpara’s close win over Jesse White for the Democratic nomination in the 46th state House district, and incumbent Republican Congressman Bill Shuster’s narrow victory over challenger Art Halvorson.
Before November, one major concern should be cleaning up reported shortcomings in the behavior of some of the folks running the polling places in Washington County.
We receive calls from voters during every election about improper activities at polling places, and it’s largely related to impermissible campaigning at the polls. But Tuesday, some of the reports we received involved those who are supposed to be enforcing the rules.
There were some gripes about the way the paper ballots in the Democratic Senate race were handled, but that’s not totally unexpected in light of the fact the need for those ballots was a late-developing situation. There’s no excuse, however, for other incidents we learned about.
In one case, a voter saw a constable assigned to a polling place in East Washington sitting at a table at which Donald Trump campaign materials were displayed. We’re not sure who was responsible for placing those materials there, in clear violation of election law, but the people running that polling site had a duty to see that they were removed.
In another case, a voter casting a ballot at the precinct at Washington Park was witness to a poll worker making disparaging remarks, in front of voters, about Sanders. The voter advised the poll worker that such behavior was not proper, and that resulted in the poll worker becoming angry and confrontational with the voter. That’s simply appalling.
These poll workers are not volunteers.
They are paid to do these jobs, and they should be expected to do them properly.
We hope these failures and any others reported to the county elections office will be dealt with before the vote in November. That action might well include additional training or having people from the main office paying more visits to the voting locations to ensure that the law is being followed and that the workers are properly serving voters.