A Lackawanna County judge removed a poll worker from Moscow Borough\u2019s voting precinct during Tuesday\u2019s primary election for \u201cmisconduct\u201d of trying to influence voters and their confidence in the voting system and procedures, according to the order.<\/p>\n
County Judge Margaret Bisignani Moyle removed Teresa Ripley as a judge of elections in the borough\u2019s sole polling place and also required Ripley to leave the premises, according to the order filed Tuesday at 2:41 p.m. in Lackawanna County Court.<\/p>\n
The judge took the action \u201cafter careful consideration of the information received regarding the Judge of Elections in Moscow Ward-0 Precinct-0 namely, inappropriate behavior and misconduct towards potential voters and Election Board Members, including verbally attempting to influence voters inside the polling place and attempting to sway their confidence in the voting equipment and voting procedures required by law to be followed,\u201d according to the order.<\/p>\n
Efforts to reach Ripley were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
Anthony Lomma, the assistant solicitor for Lackawanna County assigned to the county election board, said Moyle\u2019s order removing Ripley was the only order issued by a judge during Tuesday\u2019s primary election.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know there were at least one, if not two or three, complaints that came into voter registration about her actions and the judge (Moyle) was very concerned with the whole idea that people should be able to go and vote and not be able to be influenced one way or the other. That\u2019s the cornerstone of our country,\u201d Lomma said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to maintain neutrality working the polls there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ripley ran as a Republican in the November 2025 general election for judge of elections in Moscow, according to results of that election. Ripley, who was uncontested in that election, received 436 votes to win the polling-place post. There also were 74 write-in votes.<\/p>\n
Ripley previously publicly raised concerns and questions about voting matters in recent years, including during a Lackawanna County Board of Elections hearing in November. At that hearing, the board \u2014 composed of Moyle and fellow Lackawanna County Judges Terrence Nealon and Frank Ruggiero \u2014 unanimously certified the results of the 2025 general election.<\/p>\n
Earlier, a 2022 article in The Times-Tribune reported Ripley was one of about a dozen voters concerned about election integrity who attended a Board of Elections meeting and raised various questions about the mail-in ballot process. At that time, county elections Director Beth Hopkins explained the way mail-in ballots work. Hopkins responded to a comment by Ripley, who insisted Democrats in her family received multiple ballots in 2020 while Republican family members received none. Ripley insisted she was not mistaken, but Hopkins said voters often confuse mail-in ballot applications with actual ballots because many different groups send mail-in ballot applications to voters unsolicited.\n<\/p>\n
More recently, during a March 4 meeting of the Lackawanna County commissioners, Ripley spoke in support of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, in the context of a debate over a proposed ordinance to prohibit county cooperation in federal immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
Ripley also unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for Moscow Borough Council in 2013 and 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Lackawanna County judge removed a poll worker from Moscow Borough\u2019s voting precinct during Tuesday\u2019s primary election for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,7376,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-200468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-moscow","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200468","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=200468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}