ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Lehigh County has a new Chief Clerk of Elections.<\/p>\n
Michael Paston was confirmed Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
69 News reporter Rick Holmes spoke exclusively with Paston on the changes ahead of election day.<\/p>\n
Michael Paston beat out at least 9 other candidates to become Lehigh County’s Chief Clerk of Elections.<\/p>\n
Paston, of Upper Dublin Township in Montgomery County, stood out because of his county government experience, which he believes will be valuable in purple Lehigh County.<\/p>\n
“You just do the job,” said Paston moments before his confirmation. “You make sure the elections run as smooth as possible and count the votes.”<\/p>\n
Paston, an attorney and tax professional, has been First Deputy Clerk of Courts for Bucks County since 2020. In that role, he managed a 26-person independent office responsible for the criminal records of the court system, while developing and managing a multimillion-dollar budget. Paston served the same role in Montgomery County from 2013 to 2019.<\/p>\n
Rick Holmes asked, “If we get to the primaries and there is a big voting machine breakdown, how do you handle that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe contact the Election Board, the three people who are in charge, make sure they know it. And we have a solicitor as well, and we get their input and most importantly, bottom line is make sure everyone who wants to vote, gets to vote,” Paston responded.<\/p>\n
Lehigh County Executive Josh Siegel says it was important to him to find a new chief clerk before the Pa. primary on May 19th, but not to expect any changes before then.<\/p>\n
“We will be running this business as usual there will be five drop boxes available throughout Lehigh County, including the 24\/7 one here at the county government center. And we’ll be getting the mail-in ballots out shortly,” Siegel said.<\/p>\n
Paston’s first day on the job is Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Lehigh County has a new Chief Clerk of Elections. Michael Paston was confirmed Tuesday afternoon.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,80142,18187,80143,5497,433,13135,80141,1824],"class_list":["post-179592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-chief-clerk-of-elections","tag-county-government","tag-drop-boxes","tag-election-day","tag-lehigh-county","tag-mail-in-ballots","tag-michael-paston","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}