Butler County commissioners expressed differing opinions about the effectiveness of state legislation that makes the county eligible to receive nearly $700,000 to administer the upcoming election under a set of rules aimed at improving the integrity of elections.

Agreeing to abide by the rules is a requirement of the law passed in early July that creates the Election Integrity Grant Program and allocates $45 million from the state budget to fund the program. The law calls for annual funding.

At their July 27 meeting, the commissioners agreed to apply for a grant of up to $696,389 from the program, which allows counties to receive $5.15 for each registered voter. Butler County has 135,235 registered voters.

The rules attached to the grant require the county to not receive any election funding from third parties, to begin counting election ballots at 7 a.m. on Election Day, and to continue that ballot counting uninterrupted until it is complete.

Leslie Osche, chairwoman of the board of commissioners, said the county has carried out most of those requirements in previous elections.

She said the county never has accepted third-party funding for elections and turned down an offer in 2020 from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which receives donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

“We never got third-party election funding. It was brought up here. We immediately said we’re not interested. It’s our responsibility,” Osche said. A specific dollar amount was not included in that contact, she added.

Philadelphia County received $10 million from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, according to state Sen. Lisa Baker, R-20th, who sponsored the bill.

The state does provide funding for special elections and mandated recounts, and the federal government provides for voting equipment through the Help America Vote Act of 2002, Baker said

Vote counting conducted by the elections bureau begins at 8 a.m., but beginning an hour earlier at 7 a.m. should not create a big problem, Osche said.

The vote counts in the 2021 election and this year’s primary were not interrupted until they were completed. The 2020 vote count was stopped during Election Day evening due to staff exhaustion and a broken ballot scanner and was completed the following day, she said.

“Clearly this is the Legislature’s attempt to make sure money is provided so we don’t have to pre-canvass, and we can finish our count uninterrupted and post the results,” Osche said. “We will need a second shift.”

Pre-canvassing involves opening and preparing the ballots, but not counting them until Election Day.

Staff from other departments were brought in to help elections bureau staff count votes in past elections, but the county didn’t reimburse those other departments, Osche said. The state funding allows the county to reimburse those departments for using their staff or hiring temporary staff to complete the count without interruption, she said.

“We prefer to use our own folks,” Osche said.

A requirement that counties must provide each precinct with enough paper ballots for each registered voter in each precinct except for voters who applied for and received absentee ballots will result in a lot of unused ballots, she said.

That requirement is intended to eliminate concerns over having to print and deliver ballots to precincts on Election Day if they run out, she said.

“We’ll have a cleaner reconciliation and audit trail by doing that even though there’s going to be a lot of wasted paper, but it avoids confusion about running out of ballots,” Osche said.

Commissioner Kevin Boozel said there are good intentions behind the law, but it would be more effective if it included provisions recommended by the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania. He serves as chairman of CCAP board.

The association wanted the law to allow pre-canvassing of mail-in and absentee ballots, and to move the mail-in ballot application deadline to 15 days before an election, he said.

Act 77 of 2019 allowed voters to apply for a mail-in ballot up to seven days before an election. It led to some voters not receiving their ballots before the deadline to submit them at 8 p.m. on Election Day or receiving them too close to the deadline for ballots to be returned by mail by 8 p.m. on election night, he said.

“We requested both, but neither was approved, Boozel said.

He said the county wouldn’t have to use staff or hire temporary workers to assist in the election if pre-canvassing was permitted.

“I promoted pre-canvassing,” he added.

Some legislators were upset about counties not completing vote counts on Election Day, but Boozel said conducting an uninterrupted count could result in errors.

“When you get tired that’s when people make mistakes,” Boozel said.

Using county employees to conduct the count is preferable to hiring temporary workers from an agency, he said.

He said he would like to see some of the money used to hire another registrar for the elections bureau, which currently has three registrars.

Registrars are involved in the day-to-day operations of the bureau by helping people register to vote or change party registrations, check the accuracy of voter rolls, tally voting results and post results, he said.

“They are ones really running the show,” Boozel said.

Commissioner Kim Geyer said the county will meet the criteria of the law, which she hopes will help the Legislature understand the complexities involved with running an election and counting votes at the county level.

“We’ll come up with a strategic plan to make sure the ballots are canvassed and counted uninterrupted,” Geyer said. “Using the grant will help the Legislature understand the amount of money needed to carry out elections. Law and court orders really complicated the entire system. Hopefully, it will demonstrate to them the manpower necessary to meet the criteria.”

A lot of the complexities in elections are the result of Act 77, which expanded the use of mail-in ballots, she said.

“I don’t believe the Legislature has an understanding of the election system, but they’re making rules and reforms. They need to come to each county election department to understand the system created through Act 77 — all the issues, processes, complexity, what we do and how.

“I remind people before Act 77, we had a perfectly fine voting system called the absentee ballot,” Geyer said.