How Mercer County escaped election conspiracies • Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Pennsylvania could be among the most closely contested states in the bitterest national election in recent U.S. history. But Mercer County — through a combination of its history, culture and grassroots efforts to boost voter trust — has so far escaped most of the rancor, distrust and misinformation that plagues election officials in other parts of the state.

“The problems in Mercer County were really minimal,” said Jeff Greenburg, a senior election administration adviser at the nonpartisan good-government group Committee of Seventy, who was Hall’s immediate predecessor in the elections office. “And this at a time when we have major trust problems among many voters.”

Hall is hesitant to call Mercer County a model for other jurisdictions because at least some of its success is due to the unique history and demographics of the place itself — a Republican county with a recent history of significant labor and Democratic politics, making it fairly centrist.

Mercer is located just a few miles east of Youngstown, Ohio, in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania’s Appalachian Plateau. The company opened its first steel mill in 1887 – and thrived over the next century largely through manufacturing, coal mining and agriculture.

However, as local steel mills closed in the 1980s and 1990s, both the county’s fortunes and politics changed. After voting Democratic in five consecutive presidential elections, Mercer County narrowly voted for President George W. Bush in 2004 and has voted increasingly for Republican candidates in every election since.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, registered Republicans now outnumber Democrats by about 13,000 people – 38,000 Republicans versus 25,000 Democrats.

Election challenges

The hilly two-lane road between Hall’s home near Hermitage and his office in Mercer passes three modest trailer parks, acres of hay and corn and at least four dozen Trump/Vance posters. The signs are so popular that Ginny Steese Richardson, chairwoman of the county Republican Party, has started distributing them to supporters who live along major streets and highways.

Hall is an outsider to this world: He and his wife moved to Mercer from Flagstaff, Arizona, in August 2020, just before that year’s presidential election. However, he was no stranger to electoral difficulties, having previously overseen elections in Arizona and South Carolina. He also worked as a researcher for the Federal Voting Assistance Program and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, as well as other state and federal organizations, on voter access and voter administration issues.

But in Pennsylvania, Hall immediately faced new challenges, starting with a sharp increase in mail-in votes during the COVID-19 pandemic. About 16,000 people voted by mail in Mercer County in 2020, compared to the roughly 10,000 people expected to vote by mail this year.

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Another 1,500 people cast a provisional vote after requesting mail-in ballots but went to the polls instead, causing poll workers at a church to mistakenly turn away some voters, creating a cascade of logistical problems for Hall’s staff. Issues related to absentee voting ultimately forced the department to hire three temporary workers and approve hundreds of overtime hours, he told a state legislative committee in 2021.

“I felt sorry for him,” Richardson said. “He had a terrible first choice.”

Despite these challenges, Mercer County avoided the kinds of conspiracies, accusations and litigation that dominated the 2020 contest in other parts of the state. Notably, Republican activists elsewhere falsely claimed that local and state election officials manipulated ballots, obstructed poll watchers, or otherwise allowed mismanagement and fraud.

Trump continues to falsely claim that a significant portion of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania in 2020 were fraudulent – one of his many lies about the 2020 election that has led to a rise in threats and harassment against poll workers. Similar claims could gain traction again this year, election experts fear, as rules delay the counting of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.

In Mercer County, where voters are known to bring donuts to the polls and where workers typically know many voters in their precinct personally, workers have reported no such abuse. In fact, Hall instructs workers to limit in-person conversations on Election Day; In several districts there have been delays in the past because old neighbors or friends became a little too talkative.

This small town sense of community probably helped keep things civilized. But some credit also goes to Hall, who serves as equal parts wank and cheerleader for the electoral process. Since coming to Mercer, he has cultivated close relationships with the chairmen of the Republican and Democratic parties – both, he cheerfully notes, very small women in their 70s.

“Thad just obeys everyone who calls him and asks about things,” said Democratic Party Chairwoman Judy Hines. “It is absolutely certain that there is no error or fraud in Mercer County.”

Nearly 6 in 10 Americans are worried or very worried about voter fraud in this election.

Among other measures, Hall routinely invites Republicans and Democrats to participate in tests of the county’s voting machines, and bipartisan teams work together to count mail-in ballots. In early May, after the Pennsylvania primary, Hall also recruited five Democrats and five Republicans to conduct the county’s post-election hand count, in which his department also audited twice as many precinct results as required by state law.

In a post on LinkedIn, Hall explained that the bipartisan auditors are “ambassadors to the public who explain why voters should have confidence in our process.” That includes Mercer County’s nearly 500 poll workers, most of whom are retirees and some of whom are returning for their second or third presidential election.

In recent trainings, poll workers peppered Hall with detailed, sensitive questions and thumbed through the 70-page handbook outlining their duties and rules. Hall — a big fan of checklists — provided color-coded, step-by-step instructions for everything from registering voters to properly sealing various bags and trash cans when polls close.

“I find it insulting when people ask if we’re doing something wrong,” a longtime Republican poll worker told Hall as he attended a recent training session. “We’re not doing anything wrong. We strictly follow the rules.”

“We always tell people, ‘It’s all locally run,'” Hall said. “’Really give your locals some credit.’”

Trust in elections

But even here in Mercer County, confidence in elections is beginning to fade. Residents have always had questions about the election process, said Greenburg, who became the county’s election director in 2007 before stepping down in 2020. Now, however, a growing share of voters are so convinced that the election is rigged that “there’s nothing.” “The election official can tell them or show them what might convince them,” Greenburg said.

According to a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, nearly six in 10 Americans are worried or very worried about voter fraud in this election – a number that rises to 86% among Republicans.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court says the Nov. 5 election is too close to resolve questions about absentee voting

Across Pennsylvania, Greenburg is particularly concerned about the risk that individual recount petitions or a fraudulent election board could delay the certification of results. He also worries about the potential for political violence: Some counties in Pennsylvania have installed bulletproof glass and panic buttons in their election offices. Officials in Mercer have also planned additional Election Day security measures for Hall and his department, but do not anticipate they will be needed.

“Unfortunately, we live in different times than we used to,” said Bill Finley Jr., a first-term Republican county commissioner. “I feel like we’re at a boiling point with politics in this country, especially at the national level.”

Party and election officials in Mercer County say they will fight this tide for as long as possible. Republican commissioners routinely assure their voters that elections in Mercer are fair and secure, they told Stateline.

Richardson, the Republican Party chair, said she is “confident” in the county’s election process. As she sat behind her desk at Republican headquarters, where she wore a Trump T-shirt and heart-shaped Trump earrings and drank from two Trump coffee cups, she shook her head as she remembered cutting down an activist , who placed a Trump sign and a Trump flag across the street from a group of Democrats registering voters.

“I get along well with Democrats, and when I have Republicans harassing them, it makes me very unhappy,” she said. “I’d rather things stay as peaceful as possible.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network operating as a 501c(3) public charity supported by grants and a coalition of donors. Stateline maintains editorial independence. If you have any questions, please contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.