READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Board of Elections voted Thursday to refer two separate matters relating to complaints that arose on Election Day to the district attorney\u2019s office for further review.<\/p>\n
The first matter involved a voting complaint in the Borough of Wyomissing where a voter showed up to vote and was informed that another person had already checked in to vote under that individual\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
Solicitor Cody Kauffman said the records show that someone checked in during the morning and voted under the voter\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
Kauffman added that upon review, the complaint does not appear to stem from anybody with a similar name.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the board knows, there are multiple provisions in the election code that criminalize the act of voting or attempting to vote as another person, so under the circumstances, it would be my recommendation to refer this to the district attorney’s office to allow them to further investigate and, hopefully get some clarity in terms of what went on here,\u201d Kauffman said.<\/p>\n
County Commissioner Chair Christian Leinbach added that there should be a level of urgency to do everything possible to track down the individual and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is extremely troubling,\u201d Leinbach said. \u201cIf this other voter hadn’t come forward to vote, no one would have ever noticed this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leinbach said that the signature should have been questioned by staff.<\/p>\n
He added that the matter demonstrates the need to examine signatures during staff training.<\/p>\n
The second matter involved the Borough of Lyons, where there were numerous complaints of voter intimidation and harassment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the board will recall in the primary, there is an individual who launched a write-in campaign for the mayor of Lyons Borough,\u201d Kauffman explained. \u201cThat individual did not receive the number of write-in votes required under the law to be declared the winner.”<\/p>\n
“Subsequently, litigation ensued in the Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania and was appealed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed the Eastern District\u2019s dismissal of that lawsuit which argued that it was unconstitutional to not place his name on the general election ballot,” he said.<\/p>\n
As a result, the individual was not on the ballot in Lyons, but there was a valid candidate for mayor who ran as an independent.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the complaints do allege that voters were unable to vote without confrontation, persuasion and pressure, which is a concern because under the election code, it is a felony to use or practice any intimidation in the precincts or to prevent them (voters) from voting or restraining their freedom of choice,” Kauffman said.<\/p>\n
Leinbach said there were reports of individuals going up to cars as they pulled up to the precinct polling place.<\/p>\n
County commissioners said these complaints can only now be regarded as allegations, but that it is appropriate that the district attorney be allowed to investigate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Board of Elections voted Thursday to refer two separate matters relating to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,10073,10216,20937,624,20939,7478,20938,28,128,130,129,20940,133],"class_list":["post-33863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-berks-county-board-of-elections","tag-christian-leinbach","tag-cody-kauffman","tag-district-attorney","tag-eastern-district-court-of-pennsylvania","tag-general-election","tag-lyons-borough","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-third-circuit-court-of-appeals","tag-wyomissing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33863","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=33863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}