Northampton County exploring adding voter pop-up events ahead of PA primary | Nazareth Area

EASTON, Pa.- Northampton County is moving forward with plans to add election pop-up events to its voter services this year.

On Tuesday, the county’s election commission approved a request from the elections office to schedule up to six of the events ahead of the Pennsylvania primary election on May 19.

“The events are designed to build on the existing election processes, not replace them, by bringing services directly into communities,” said Chris Commini, Northampton County’s elections registrar.

The pop-up events would function like the satellite ballot on-demand locations the county explored last year; residents would be able to register to vote, apply for a mail-in or absentee ballot and / or receive and complete an on-demand ballot that could be deposited in a secure box on-site. 

Commini pointed out, the pop-ups are not meant to serve as early voting, which is not allowed under Pennsylvania law. Ballots collected at the pop-ups would not be opened or counted until election day. 

The pop-ups would be staffed by elections office personnel, at little added cost. “We bought a mobile drop box that cost $40,” Commini said. “It was within our budget.”

The transfer of ballots from the mobile box would be handled by law enforcement, just like the county’s seven drop boxes, which would not be impacted or replaced by the pop-ups.

The mobile pop-ups are meant to be one-off events, said Commini. “We’re in there for a few hours, we handle the crowd that comes in, ballots are picked up, and then we depart.” 

The elections office thinks they’re needed to help voters who may have trouble getting to their polling place by bringing a mobile office closer to where they live. The pop-ups will also reduce congestion at the elections office and drop box sites and cut down on wait times at polling places on election day, Commini said.

So far, the elections office has identified Lafayette College in Easton and Northampton Community College’s main campus in Bethlehem Township as host sites. Commini said he’s looking for input from the commission on where the others should go.

The vote to advance the plan was 3-1 (the panel is currently short one member); Scott Hough, the commission’s vice-chair cast the dissenting vote. “I’m worried about the security and I’m worried about fairness and about making sure… these things aren’t going into places that are going to give a candidate an advantage one way or the other,” he said.