Councilwoman Reuther Sneers At Citizen Election Concerns In Delco — Delaware County Council (Pa) heard numerous citizens, last night, Oct. 19, express concerns about election integrity and sneeringly dismissed them.
Delco has achieved nationwide notoriety due its performance in the 2020 election and is the subject of a book having a nationwide impact.
Robert Mancini of Media introduced documents showing that Pennsylvania’s Democrat-controlled government plans to ignore a Supreme Court ruling that ballots must be dated; and that Delaware County has a significant risk of voter fraud.
Mancini asked if Council will follow state directives to count undated mail-in ballots or accept the Supreme Court decision.
Chris Fabre (phonetic spelling) of Upper Darby expressed concern about chain of custody procedures and said he was told by the Board of Elections that chain of custody ends at the Wharf counting house in Chester.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask what happens once the ballots and v-drives go to the Wharf,” he said.
He also asked about what he called the “infamous back room”.
“Apparently that’s only about putting official results up to the web,” he said. “Fine, but the excuse that was given that there was no camera in room was that they didn’t want the cameras to see the passwords on the computers . . . To me that’s kind of bizarre. Encrypt the passwords, put the computer on the main floor, people would be a little more gratified with that.”
Joy Schwartz of Drexel Hill brought up the $2.2 million one-time election-integrity grant the county received from the state. She described it as a windfall since money had already been budgeted for the election. She said that last summer citizens requested that money be used to secure the 40 or so ballot dropboxes in Delco. She noted that the county told citizens that video of dropboxes from previous elections were unavailable since they weren’t preserved.
She noted the Oct. 18 ruling in which a judge ordered Chester County to monitor its dropboxes. She said the judge blistered Chesco’s Board of Elections for waiting for litigation rather than following the state directives.
She pointed out that Chesco has but 13 dropboxes compared to Delco’s 40.
She said that some of Delco’s boxes don’t appear to have cameras and asked to be corrected if she was mistaken.
Further, she noted the cameras in place are solar powered which make night energy outages possible if not probable. This is the fall after all.
She said she was also told that there was only one Park Police officer that monitors all 40 of the cameras.
“I wonder if that officer ever goes to sleep, because certainly the mules don’t,” she said. “I hope that Delco will not wait for litigation and waste taxpayers money before securing its dropboxes and I hope that Delco will use some of that $2.2 million grant, that windfall, to contract with a company today to place reliable cameras with livestream, zoomed-in close-up video on the 40 dropboxes to preserve that footage in digital format and to make it available to the public.”
Carris Kocher of Glen Mills brought up the recent arrest of Konnech CEO Eugene Yu in regard to Konnech allowing China to have access to U.S. voting systems.
She also expressed concern about reports that vDrives are being mishandled at the Wharf.
Others spoke as well including some defending the county. The entire meeting can be watched here with the public comments starting at 24:32. Or just click Public Comment in the index.
Christine A. Reuther answered the citizens during council remarks accusing them of making “unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud.” She said there was no rational reason for there to be a chain of custody once the vDrive gets back to the county. She warned citizens not to try to interfere with the election.
Hey Christine, it’s a two-way street. Poll watchers have legally authorized access to ballot processes and this has been upheld by the state Supreme Court.
Councilman Kenneth Madden expressed dismay that two-thirds of the meeting addressed “debunked” vote fraud allegations which makes one think he wasn’t paying attention. He wondered why the people couldn’t talk about all the peachy keen things the county was doing.
Delco Council, here’s a thought: Why not just say you’re going to follow the Supreme Court ruling and use some of that $2.2 million to secure the dropboxes?
Assuming you want to ease doubt, instill confidence and foster unity, that is.
Regardless, expressing concerns and offering solutions are not making allegations.