(WHTM) – Counties across Pennsylvania are already preparing for November’s general election. But this year they may run into staffing issues.
Jerry Feaser spent ten years as the director of the Dauphin County Bureau of Elections.
“I came to the election bureau in 2013,” said Feaser. “For me, it was time.”
He retired at the end of 2023.
Feaser said, “We identified our deputy director was going to be the one to most likely take my spot, so I started working with him very closely.”
Feaser made sure that person was ready to take over and was prepared for the November presidential election.
“This is the big one,” said Feaser.
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He says Dauphin County is in good hands but there are worries some are not.
Feaser said, “I saw what happened to a lot of other counties where a director left and nobody was there to take the helm and I saw how chaotic that was.”
Pennsylvania needs election workers. The states have been understaffed for years but 2020 was the tipping point.
“There’s a whole bunch of different reasons,” said Feaser.
Reasons like the pandemic, hostility driven by false claims of a stolen election, and even Act 77 an election reform bill that Feaser says made things complicated.
“Elections were very static. Everybody knew what the rules were going into the game,” said Feaser. “But with Act 77, there’s all these court challenges now about every little piece of the puzzle and it just complicates things.”
Did you know Pennsylvania’s Capital City had a different name?
He worries that’s deterring election workers and that could be a problem come November. Secretary of State Al Schmidt thinks so, too.
“You are more likely to encounter mistakes, mistakes certainly not included to influence the outcome of an election,” said Schmidt.
Feaser said, “We’ve seen that in some counties where newer election officials weren’t fully, completely understanding of what goes into a ballot.”
Feaser says fixing the problem won’t be easy, “It’s gonna take a lot of people to sit down at the table, put aside some of the more partisan issues.”
But it will be necessary.
“Elections are one of those occupations where failure is not an option,” said Feaser.
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