Nearly four years of election fraud accusations on a national and local level paired with public safety concerns leading up to the 2024 presidential election weighed heavily on the psyche of Luzerne County voters on election day.

According to sophomore Allyse Stanko, a business administration major who worked as a volunteer election worker at Holy Family Parish in Luzerne, voters were noticeably concerned about whether their votes would be properly processed and counted. “One gentleman wanted to take a picture of his ballot, which, as long as you don’t get anyone else in the background, you are allowed to do,” she explained as she chuckled.

Stanko checked in prospective voters as they entered her polling station. “There were lots of comments about fraud and [people saying] ‘I want to make sure my vote counts,’” she said.

The 2024 general election was the first time Stanko volunteered as a poll worker. Despite some tension about election security and fraud at the polling station where she worked, Stanko said her experience was worthwhile.  “I really enjoyed it. I don’t know too much about politics, but I liked being a part of it no matter what party voters [were affiliated with],” she said.

She also enjoyed the sense of community that the voting process provided.  “There’s a lot of people that live on my street that I had no idea lived there. Seeing local people that I see around town coming out vote. It was just a fun experience,” she explained. Stanko decided to volunteer to work this election out of a sense of community and civic duty, particularly as someone who is a part of the younger generation of American voters. “The l last time we voted, I saw that they had a volunteer’s worksheet, and it was all my neighbors, so I figured why not do it? When [my neighbors] become older, who is going to take over? Who is going to know how to do this stuff? So as the younger generation, we need to get involved. I needed to get involved somehow,” she explained.
Public safety and election security concerns leading up to the 2024 general election dominated much of the national and local pre-election conversation, including in Luzerne County. The polarizing topic even took center stage on Misericordia’s lower campus. The voting drop box in the lobby of Passan Hall, which was in operation for both the 2020 and 2022 elections, was not operational for the 2024 election due to public safety and election security concerns voiced by County officials and later voted on by the Luzerne County Board of Elections.

The chaotic and confusing process regarding the drop boxes paired with the political controversy surrounding it, put Misericordia in quite a precarious situation leading up to the election. The Luzerne County Board of Elections made it clear to the University that it needed to satisfy the security protocols the Board voted to pass based on a statewide election security review conducted by state officials in 2022. Part of the criteria the university needed to satisfy was to secure the drop box to the floor, which would have required drilling into the floor of the Passan Hall lobby, which was renovated in 2023 due to a flood damaging to the building the same year. According to university officials, the newly renovated floor is not conducive to drilling. Officials reached out to Luzerne County prior to the election for alternatives, but it did not receive any viable options, they said. The Passan Hall drop box provided a convenient and easily accessible voting option for registered voters in Luzerne County, which includes registered Luzerne County residents in the Dallas community as well as Misericordia faculty and students. The balance of reasonably supporting its students and the Dallas community through the election process versus looking out for the best interests of the university and the safety of faculty and students, placed the university in a difficult position.

Judging by the security protocols implemented at the County owned Penn Place voting drop box in Wilkes-Barre, which included a bullet proof glass enclosure around the drop box and boulders outside the building to prevent  vehicles from purposely crashing into the building, it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the university to replicate the same security measures at Passan Hall.

The drop box controversy entered the limelight in Luzerne County on Sept. 18, when County Manager Romilda Crocamo announced that due to security concerns the County would not be implementing the four voting drop boxes at the previously designated locations around the county, including the one in Passan Hall. The announcement was followed by a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, and a letter written by the Pennsylvania Attorney General condemning the decision. The letter from the Attorney General, which was addressed to Crocamo, included a reminder that the Luzerne County Board of Elections has authority in the matter over the County Manager. The letter also threatened legal and civil action against Crocamo, which led to Crocamo reversing her decision. After Crocamo’s reversal, the ACLU dropped its lawsuit. The Luzerne County Board of Elections voted to only implement the two drop boxes on county property during an Oct. 9 board meeting, which was open to the public.

Although some elected officials and governing bodies saw the election security and public safety concerns as a legitimate reason to place additional security measures on drop boxes, other governing bodies and organizations, like the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office and the ACLU, saw this as political posturing from Crocamo and other officials in Luzerne County. Both the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s letter and the ACLU’s letter addressed to Crocamo contained language that implied that the drop box concerns helped to promote false election fraud narratives and voter accessibility questions. However, security and public safety concerns proved all too real in Oregon and Washington on Oct. 28, as two drop boxes, one in each state, were set ablaze in the early morning hours. According to CNN, some 488 ballots were damaged at the Vancouver, Washington location. Due to fire resistant security measures put in place, almost all of the ballots were saved at the Portland, Oregon location.

According to local news outlets, public safety threats during election night also proved to be a reality in Luzerne County, as the Penn Place building in Wilkes-Barre received bomb threats and was momentarily evacuated. According to NBC News, threats were received at polling stations and election offices in a dozen Pennsylvania counties. Similar threats occurred in  the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area, where, according to Reuters, bomb threats occurred for multiple polling stations, which resulted in evacuations and the districts having to extend the voting time by an hour. Bomb threats were also received at polling places in Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, none of these threats proved credible and most originated from Russian email domains.

In spite of public safety threats, according to Stanko, voter turnout was extremely high at the Holy Family Parish polling station in Luzerne, particularly the number of first-time voters. “I was surprised by all of the first-time voters, not just high schoolers, but a lot of older folks,” she said.

Dr. Maureen Pascal, who is a Professor of Physical Therapy and serves as an election judge for the Luzerne County town of Swoyersville, echoed the same sentiments in regard to high voter turnout, specifically for first time voters. “Probably for our voting board, it was the busiest time I have ever been a judge. People were in and out non-stop pretty much all day. A lot of first-time voters and a lot of people surrendering their mail in ballot so they could vote in person,” she said.

Pascal said the motivation for the voters who surrendered their mail-in ballots ranged from wanting their vote to be counted during the first tally to concerns about receiving their mail in ballot too late.  “A few people said they received them late. Now, they may have requested them right at the deadline, but they didn’t actually get them until they were afraid when they actually mailed it, it wouldn’t be there in time. It had to be there on election day,” she said. “First tally is going to be people who voted on the machines, second tally is the mail- in [ballots] because they have to go through them. So, people just wanted to have their vote counted that day.”

Pascal believes that not having two of the four designated voting drop boxes in Luzerne County operational, including the one at Passan Hall, may have played a role in the amount of people in her voting district surrendering their mail-in ballot on election day. “They would have had to go to [Penn Place in] Wilkes-Barre. Actually, I think people heard about this, if you dropped it off in Wilkes-Barre it used to be that the drop box was right at the entrance. You could walk in and walk out, but now you had to go through security,” she said.

Prior to election day, Pascal had her own unpleasant experience at Penn Place while she was picking up the materials she is required to possess as an election judge on election day, “Well, it was kind of annoying because I actually went to pick up my [election] bag, and to get in the building I had to wait in line because there were people waiting in line to go through security to drop off their ballot,” she explained. “They had the drop box right by the exit, so I couldn’t leave the building until I was almost in the line with people who were voting because they were blocking the path [to the exit],” she said.

Although Pascal repeated Stanko’s observation of noticeable tension at her polling location on election day, she said the tension didn’t boil over into any major incidents of violence or voter intimidation.  “We did have a few bikers show up with their Trump flags on the back, but they stayed in the parking lot,” she said.

Just as a precaution, Pascal did implement her own security measure the night before the election. “So, the rule is no electioneering within 10 feet of the entrance of the polling place. So, the night before I got tape, and I marked out a 10 foot perimeter by our door. In the morning, there were a bunch of signs in [the perimeter], so I moved them outside of the perimeter and nobody crossed [the line],” she said.

“There was one person campaigning for Brenda Pugh (Republican House of Representatives winner), and she would stand like right on the line, but she didn’t cross it, and nobody else did,” she explained.

Pascal felt things went well at her polling place, despite a few minor incidents. “I felt like people were respectful, surprisingly. I heard a couple people yelling outside but nothing significant,” she said.

Despite things going well overall at the Holy Family Parish polling place, where Stanko volunteered, she described the tension that resulted in a few uneasy moments. “I didn’t fear for my safety, but there was one gentleman who made me feel uncomfortable,” she said. “When I pulled up his name, it said that he had a mail-in ballot. When I asked him if he had the ballot with him, he said he did not [because] he never received it. He then started wielding his registration card and started yelling, ‘This is my right to vote!’,” she said.

Stanko said the Judge of Elections came right over and diffused the situation by explaining to the gentleman that he needed to fill out a provisional ballot because he did not have his mail-in ballot to surrender. “That was my first voter. It was like seven in the morning,” she said as she laughed. “He made scene,” she said. “Another woman yelled at me because I couldn’t pronounce her name correctly,” she added.

Despite non-credible bomb threats by an enemy foreign government, the democratic voting process on a national and local level seems to have stood up to the challenge of this unprecedented presidential election. Many of the concerns prior to the election about threats to public safety and democracy were focused on the culprits being American citizens. However, the majority of election interference issues may have come at the hands of a foreign government, rather than from within. Although Pascal feels there were some legitimate concerns in these regards, she also feels the threat to public safety and election security, and the protocols that resulted from them, were somewhat overblown in Luzerne County, “Absolutely, yes,” she said. “I think really a lot of it was just to discourage people from voting early. Yeah, it was totally overblown,” she claimed.

Threats to the voting process, concerns of public safety and the sanctity of democracy were heavily part of the national dialogue during the four years leading up to the 2024 general election. Although democracy and the voting process seems to have passed this unparalleled test, Pascal believes things wouldn’t have gone as smoothly if Kamala Harris won, or if the winner wasn’t clear on election night and battleground states were still counting votes days after the election, similar to what happened in the 2020 election prior to the Jan. 6 insurrection. “I’m going to say no, and I definitely believe that. There was a stark difference between the way that Kamala Harris conceded the day after the election and what happened in 2020. Stark difference. There was no concession of defeat in 2020,” she said