11/06/2025
Commissioner Roe posted an update on what happened with the voter rolls on Tuesday.
There’s a lot there but definitely worth reading. Thanks to all the county workers who scrambled once the error was discovered!
STRAP IN, this will be a long post. Many of you have been asking about what happened on Election Day and what will be done to prevent similar mistakes in the future. I want to make sure I’m being as transparent as possible, so I’ll be giving periodic updates here on my public page. Some of it will be updates on WHAT happened and HOW, but until a thorough investigation happens (hopefully soon), those details may be limited. For now, I want to share my opinions on what our next steps SHOULD be.
REGARDING PERSONNEL MATTERS: Please note that I will NOT be speculating on personnel/Human Resources matters here. I don’t think that would be appropriate, for many reasons: 1) I don’t know what an investigation will show, so I’m not interested in mistakenly assigning blame before I have all the facts. 2) County staff still have a job to do. The counting of ballots is far from over. 3) The County works closely with the PA Department of State and external vendors in creating poll books. While those facts won’t absolve the County of culpability, they make me think we should wait for an investigation to show exactly what went wrong before jumping to conclusions. 4) County employees are people too. Hardworking people. People with families. People with reputations. Neighbors in our community. I get that you’re frustrated. So am I. But it’s important to stop and remember that these are human beings. I signed up to deal with hostilities from the public when I ran for office. The buck stops with the Election Board – not County employees. Please remember that. If we Commissioners fail to hold ourselves and our staff accountable, then it becomes your job to hold us accountable.
FACTS I CAN SHARE NOW:
· Independents, unaffiliateds, and minor party voters showed up to vote in person on Tuesday and quickly found out their names were not listed in the poll books. Republicans and Democrats were in there, but not the rest.
· Poll books are what you sign when you show up to vote in person. They allow the Dept. of Voter Services to compare voters’ signatures with the signatures on their registration forms. They also help to ensure that people don’t vote more than once.
· Judges of Elections (JOEs) for each of the polling precincts had to step up to the plate in that moment. The correct response was for them to have those voters cast provisional ballots. (Whether they all did that correctly or received good instructions from the County in a timely manner on Tuesday morning should be revealed in an investigation.)
· Provisional ballots are the same as everyone else’s ballots, but they receive a higher level of scrutiny. Completing them involves filling out lots of information and signing affidavits and secrecy envelopes and signatures from election inspectors, etc. The process takes a lot longer than voting the traditional way. However, it gives election officials a chance to verify that you were eligible to vote before your ballot gets lumped in with all the rest. I have voted by provisional ballot in two previous elections. It takes longer, but it does work.
· After being evaluated by election staff and sometimes even the Election Board, provisional ballots that are deemed valid ARE counted toward the final vote total. There’s a misconception out there that they only get counted if they could influence an outcome in a particular race. That’s not the case.
· Over 12,000 voters on Tuesday cast provisional ballots. A typical election of this kind wouldn’t see more than a few hundred.
· The County needed to quickly print supplemental poll books so that independent/unaffiliated/minor party voters could cast traditional ballots without having to use provisional ballots. That necessarily involved working with the PA Department of State, and it took a while.
· Once supplemental poll books were printed, they were deployed to all the precincts across the county. As you can imagine, even just driving them from West Chester to the furthest parts of the county takes time. Long story short, some supplemental poll books arrived at precincts by the early afternoon, and some arrived by late afternoon/early evening.
· A judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Chester County ruled that the polls should be kept open for an additional two hours on election night to ensure that everyone who wanted to vote could. There seemed to be some confusion on the part of many JOEs and poll workers about how to administer those additional two hours, but those details should come out in an investigation.
Here's what I think SHOULD happen and what I will be advocating for:
· The votes need to get counted first. Not certified, but counted. Why? The results you see on the Voter Services election results page are far from complete. That’s because over 12,000 people voted by provisional ballot. Imagine what would happen if investigators descended upon dozens of staff and election workers and interrupted the counting process. I want to make sure all these provisional ballots get counted the right way. We owe that to everyone who voted provisionally.
· As soon as that part is over, while information is still fresh, a proper investigation needs to take place by an independent third party. Not just the County conducting its own investigation. Not just the Department of State. An independent third party who can provide a neutral and comprehensive investigation into all the details.
· Don’t mistake my desire for a formal investigation to mean that I’m not already asking questions and getting answers as a county government official.
· The details of that formal investigation need to be made public. Very public. East to retrieve and easy to understand. They need to show everything from the process that should have been followed to where the process wasn’t followed. Who knew what and when. How the response was conducted. What went poorly and what went well with the response. How information was communicated to the public. What limitations there were.
· Then, once we have the facts, the Election Board should host a town hall meeting for the public to ask questions and get more answers. Even if I’m the only member there, so be it. And if necessary, more than one public meeting. The public is obviously welcome to come to Election Board and Board of Commissioner meetings, but those are during the workday and inconvenient for most people to attend.
OTHER COMMENTARY:
· Some people have asked me why I didn’t personally flip through the poll books before they went out. There are reasons I keep a certain cautious distance from the actual boots-on-the-ground administration of elections. 1) I need to vote on certifying the results, and if I’m too involved, I can’t be neutral in my vote. I’d rather grade the work of others rather than my own to avoid a conflict of interests. Perhaps that will have to change. 2) I’m not an expert in election administration. I rely on the expertise of others. So, I ask questions and get answers and hold administrators to a high standard on the front end before the election. Those standards were obviously not met.
· There are a surprisingly high number of variables and moving parts in the administration of elections. A lot more than I thought before taking office, and a lot more than there should be. Ever since the passage of Act 77 six years ago, elections have become much more complicated to administer. This necessitates the need for greater expertise on the part of election officials, and it requires more supervision and double-checking of work.
· Here’s something I don’t want lost in this moment: In the commotion of Tuesday morning, there are people who sprung into action to try to help. County staffers from other departments who jumped in their cars and got supplemental poll books to the precincts. Park Rangers. Emergency Services. Commissioners’ Office staff, and many more. When the polls were extended by two hours, poll workers who had already put in a full day’s work stayed even longer, despite probably wanting desperately to get home and relax. I take some comfort knowing that when issues like these arise, some heroes don’t wear capes.
· Bear in mind that I’m just one of three commissioners, and I’m the minority party commissioner at that. Just because I want something doesn’t mean I’ll get it. But my job is to speak up, and that’s just what I’m going to do, no matter who likes it. After all, that’s the point of having a minority party commissioner.
The slogan of the Washington Post is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” (Yes, I know, we are a republic, not a direct democracy). But that slogan is particularly significant and true in moments like these. That’s why I’ll be sharing as much information as I can. I’ll try to keep these posts shorter in length though.
More later. Thanks for reading!
Eric Roe
County Commissioner
