York County officials refuse to answer questions about upcoming election

Preparations for the 2024 presidential election are already expected to be underway in York County, although exactly how long remains to be seen.

The county’s Board of Elections declined The York Dispatch’s request to visit its office and interview officials ahead of the Nov. 5 election, a common practice before elections to inform readers about what to expect and how to prepare to vote. A list of questions sent via email Tuesday about election security, procedures voters should be aware of and any changes to polling places did not elicit a response from the county.

Voters in York County will have a four-year chance to vote for the next president of the United States. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris will face former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate for the third consecutive term.

Voters will also choose their congressman, U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, state representative and state officials, attorney general, treasurer, auditor general, and in the case of some York counties, a state senate seat in the 31st district.^saint district, currently held by outgoing Senator Mike Regan.

The full list of candidates is available on the Pennsylvania Department of State website. Voters can go online to check their congressional or statewide districts.

Important dates voters should know include the October 21 registration deadline and October 29, the last day to apply for a mail-in ballot, which is 5:00 p.m. that day. Online registration is available until 11:59 p.m. on October 21, while in-person registration can be done during county business hours that day.

When can York County voters expect to receive their absentee ballots? That’s one question county officials have refused to answer.

“We will not be publishing preview footage in the York Dispatch,” County Administrator Greg Monskie wrote in an email Monday, before being asked more specific questions Tuesday. “We are currently reviewing the ballots and expect to have them posted shortly.”

The denial of access prompts Eric Epstein, a good government supporter, to wonder what the office might be hiding.

“They are obstructing the view of a vital part of the machinery of democracy,” said Epstein, who runs Rock the Capital, a nonpartisan government accountability group. “You would hope that the election council would dot all the i’s and dash all the t’s.”

While county officials have declined to share that information, the Department of State has a tool that shows when counties are making absentee ballots available.

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As of Friday, the county had received more than 43,000 absentee ballot applications, more than half of which were from registered Democrats.

Last week, the state Supreme Court ruled that mail-in voters in Pennsylvania must put the correct date on their ballot envelope for their vote to be counted, overturning a lower court ruling.

While York County has traditionally offered voters a means to fix defective envelopes before Election Day, it is not known whether the board will do so this year. It is also unknown whether, as has been the case in the past, county officials will offer expanded drop-off access at the County Administration Center closer to the election.

Likewise, because the county did not respond to questions, Dispatch has no way of knowing what, if any, actions county officials are taking regarding election security.

In previous years, securing incoming votes occurred at multiple levels, including a supply chain process that revealed which of the few people with access to the data had handled each step of the meticulous process.

What about the results?

Again, without communication from the county, it’s hard to know. Historically, since mail-in voting was first used in Pennsylvania in 2020, York County has tasked teams of county workers with opening and processing mail-in ballots, which can’t begin until 7 a.m. on Election Day.

Since the introduction of mail-in voting in York County, a full vote count has routinely been conducted on election night.

Delays in counting the vast number of mail-in votes cast across the country in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic allowed conspiracy theories to spread, while Trump and his allies sowed distrust in the process and even ordered election officials to stop counting votes.

Across the country, threats against election offices have been common since 2020, when Trump lied about the results, stoked fear and unleashed a wave of easily debunked conspiracy theories pushed by his campaign and some GOP lawmakers, culminating in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was certifying the election won by Joe Biden.

This year was York County’s first election under Director Bryan Sheaffer. Sheaffer had been with the department since 2001 and was promoted earlier this year after his predecessor, Julie Haertsch, resigned for health reasons. He had been filling the position on an interim basis, largely filling in for Haertsch during the April primary.

A director with election experience could prove crucial in a presidential election year, when election officials will be under pressure from lawsuits, threats and disinformation.

“It’s crystal clear, given the behavior of 2020, that the results will be hotly contested,” Epstein said. “Whoever produces the results has to be above reproach and apolitical.”

York County has been hit by a series of mishaps in recent elections, including everything from construction that made voting difficult to access to ballot printing errors. Last year, the county settled a lawsuit over its failure to serve Hispanic voters.

York County polls will be open for in-person voting from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on November 5. Voters in line by 8 a.m. must be able to vote regardless of the length of the line.

Voters can check their registration online and learn more about voting equipment, accessibility, absentee and military voting procedures, and more. The best source for election information is vote.pa.gov.

In addition to registering online and through automatic voter registration, eligible Pennsylvania residents can register by mail or in person at their county’s voter registration office or at the following locations:

County assistance offices
WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) Program Offices
Armed Forces Recruiting Centers
County Clerk of Orphans’ Court or Marriage License Office
Local Agencies on Aging
County Offices for Mental Health and Intellectual Disabilities
Offices for Persons with Disabilities in the State Higher Education System
Special education offices in secondary schools
Providers of additional paratransit services required by the Disabled Persons Act

— Mark Walters served as York County’s communications director from November 2016 to December 2021.

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