READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Board of Elections on Thursday voted to amend the election worker\u2019s oath to place a ban on using prediction markets (utilizing AI technology) to bet or wager on election outcomes.<\/p>\n
The action amends the election worker\u2019s oath, but not the poll worker\u2019s oath, as the poll worker\u2019s oath is set statutorily and cannot be changed by the election board.<\/p>\n
Both oaths, however, already prohibit betting on elections, but the additional language makes it clear that election workers may not use prediction markets for bets or wagers on election outcomes.<\/p>\n
County Commission Christian Y. Leinbach said Delaware County recently took similar action.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was a kid, I kind of remember when Atlantic City was starting to grow and that’s where you went if you wanted to gamble,\u201d Leinbach said. \u201cThen the lottery came to Pennsylvania, and then casinos came to Pennsylvania, and look, I’m not telling people what they should or shouldn’t do, but now we’re betting on whether or not Kyle Schwarber (designated hitter for the Philadelphia Phillies) walks at his next time at bat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re betting on all kinds of things,\u201d he added. \u201cThis is in your face, and we need to make it very clear of the integrity of our elections, and that our poll workers need to understand they can have nothing to do with this. Is it an issue? Ask yourself this question: in the last six months, we’ve had cases of NBA players being indicted not for throwing a game for themselves, but for throwing a game for somebody that was a friend that was betting on the game to help them win $100,000. It’s pervasive and we don’t want this anywhere near our elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commissioner Dante Santoni Jr. responded that when he first heard about the resolution, he thought to himself that it was unnecessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then I gave it more thought and I thought that it\u2019s really important to the integrity of our process,” Santoni said.<\/p>\n
Santoni added that such language it is more important than ever with so much focus being placed on elections.<\/p>\n
In other business, the board voted to allow a date range from April 20th until May 19th as permissible dates to be on the outer envelope of a mail in absentee ballot for the Primary Election.<\/p>\n
The board noted that using the latest court decision, the ballots must be counted regardless of the date, but in the event of another opposing court decision, Berks County would segregate all ballots outside of the date range.<\/p>\n
Leinbach said the county is doing this because the actual election law has not been touched.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe law still says the envelopes shall be signed and dated,\u201d Leinbach said. \u201cWe\u2019re getting kicked back and forth from different court decisions right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Director of Elections Anne Norton said if a ballot is received with an incorrect date, the voter is notified by the Election Office and given an opportunity to change it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Board of Elections on Thursday voted to amend the election worker\u2019s oath…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[10071,10073,10200,80593,58365,212,7159,4607,1425,60557,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-180642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-anne-norton","tag-berks-county-board-of-elections","tag-christian-y-leinbach","tag-county-board-of-elections","tag-dante-santoni-jr","tag-delaware-county","tag-gambling","tag-kyle-schwarber","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-prediction-markets","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180642","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=180642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}