Commissioners explain, defend county’s election security
For more than two hours Wednesday, county officials explained — and to an extent defended — election integrity in Butler County.
In what county solicitor Wil White dubbed an “informational session” hosted by the Board of Elections, the three county commissioners responded to questions and concerns raised by Butler County residents about the integrity of the November 2020 general election.
The meeting, which was attended by scores of residents and which exceeded the capacity of the meeting room in the Butler County Government Center’s first floor, was in many ways the culmination of months of pointed questions aimed at commissioners about the election process.
“We have been, for many public meetings, for months, listening to many of you who have taken your time and shared a lot of information,” said Leslie Osche, commissioners chairwoman. “You have sent us information to read; you have provided us with data; you have provided us with lots of research, with email opinions, many, many documents, many exchanges, many conversations, many meetings ... all discussing the same subject, and everyone’s passionate about it.”
Despite the large turnout — and the passion Osche observed in the audience — the hours-long meeting was largely decorous, with only a handful of short outbursts of cheering or jeering, depending on the point raised.
The elections board solicited questions from interested residents prior to the meeting, allowing the three commissioners, who serve as the board, the requisite time to respond to the queries.
Those questions revolved mainly around the 2020 general election. Commissioners specifically replied to queries about mail-in ballots which were reportedly lost or misplaced by the U.S. Postal Service; the addition of as many as 6,000 inactive or deceased voters to the voter rolls; and votes which county officials stated in emails were “subtracted” from the totals.
To a large extent, the commissioners said these were the result of human error. The addition of dead or inactive voters — inactive voters are those who haven’t voted in two presidential elections — was the result of a clerk entering an “incorrect parameter” into the voter database when trying to remove newly inactive voters from the rolls, according to Osche. Just eight of those added voters cast a ballot, and those who remained inactive were removed from the rolls, Commissioner Kevin Boozel said.
“Subtracted” votes, Osche said, were caused by an elections worker inadvertently using the same flash drive for two voter categories, overwriting the data from the first category on the flash drive. The mistake was discovered and separate flash drives were used to register each category before the county certified the vote results.
Osche said Election Systems & Software, the company which made the machines Butler County uses, sent out instructions to counties using the machines informing them as to how not to make the same mistake.
White said the Postal Service’s handling of ballots sent out by the county Bureau of Elections the day after Columbus Day in 2020 was largely solved working with the post office to sort mailed ballots at the Butler Post Office. Prior, the ballots were sent to Pittsburgh for processing before returning to Butler County for delivery.
Other concerns commissioners addressed Wednesday were more general. Despite some voters’ concerns about multiple mail-in ballots being sent, Boozel said each voter can only have one valid ballot. When a second mailed ballot is sent out, according to Boozel, the first ballot is inactivated.
That’s accomplished through the identification on the envelope, which includes a bar code, Boozel said.
“That would explain why we were getting reports of, ‘I got two ballots,’ or ‘I got three ballots,’” Osche added.
Additionally, while some voters reported receiving multiple ballots in the mail, those were almost certainly the mail-in ballot applications sent out by individual candidates or political action groups, Boozel said.
Lessons learned during the 2020 and 2021 elections, the commissioners said, will certainly advise them in future election endeavors.
Boozel said the county has no interest in using “drop boxes” — locations where voters can deposit a ballot for pick up or transfer to the elections office — in future elections. Commissioner Kim Geyer said she would consider hand-counting of ballots at precincts in future elections, a line which received applause from a large portion of the audience.
Conversely, Boozel’s statement about the past two general elections drew some jeers from the room. “I truly, 100% believe with my heart of hearts that our elections in 2020 and 2021 were fair and accurate,” Boozel said.
Nevertheless, he said, there are “always” improvements that can be made, which starts with “making sure that you’re active” in the democratic process.
Osche also pledged to continually work to improve the county’s election integrity.
“We’re going to stay on it. We’re going to keep working together,” Osche said. “But ... it’s going to take a little time, because we’re not going to fix it in one fell swoop, and, again, because there are implications of every move we make.”
