- [Narrator] Live from your public media studios.

WVIA presents "Keystone Edition Reports."

A public affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in northeastern and central Pennsylvania.

This is "Keystone Edition Reports."

And now moderator, Larry Vojtko.

- Hello, I'm Larry Vojtko.

Coming up on April 23rd, it's the Pennsylvania primary.

It's a time for voters to go to the polls to make their voices heard and decide who is going to be the representative from their respective parties in the general election in November.

In Pennsylvania, voters must be affiliated with a party in order to take part in the primary election for elected office.

But all voters can vote on things such as constitutional amendments, ballot questions, and also any special elections held at the same time as the primary.

Historically primary attendance in the state has been much lower than that of general election attendance.

What should voters know about the election process itself?

What races are the ones to keep an eye on?

We'll discuss this and more later in the show, but first, Sarah Scinto gives us a snapshot of this upcoming primary election.

(title whooshing) - [Sarah] Voting in elections is often called a civic duty, but primary elections tend to see lower voter turnout despite being an important day for the health of our democracy.

According to Politics PA, primary turnout in the state during last year's municipal election was at just 27.5%, slightly more than one in four people.

Voters do have options when it comes to how they vote, either by mail or in person, making it easier for people to make their voices heard and exercise their right to vote.

Pennsylvania's primary is on April 23rd.

Polls are open at 7:00 AM and close at 8:00 PM.

The last day to register to vote is April 8th, and the last day to request an absentee or mail-in ballot is April 16th.

For "Keystone Edition Reports," I'm Sarah Scinto, WVIA News.

- Thanks so much, Sarah.

Let's welcome our guests who are here to share their expertise on the topic.

And joining us here in the studio is Al Schmidt, secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Borys Krawczeniuk, he's the politics reporter for WVIA News.

And Dr. Amy Widestrom, executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania.

Well, secretary Schmidt, let me start with you, and let's lay out the ballot.

What can voters, citizens expect to see when they go into the polling place?

- The race for president of the United States normally draws the most attention, but there's a number of offices on the ballot.

One of our US senators, all members of Congress are up, all state representatives, statewide races like Attorney General and Auditor General and Treasurer, they're all on the ballot.

- But earlier we heard that even unaffiliate voters can vote on constitutional amendments, ballot questions, things of that sort.

None of those are on the ballot this time.

Is that correct?

- As far as I know.

So some counties can have ballot questions that are unique to that county, as opposed to statewide.

- There's no statewide one, that's right.

So Attorney General, Auditor General, those are some of the races that are up.

Why do you think it's so difficult to... Why do we see less participation in primary elections?

- I think, well one is that people not affiliated with a major party tend to not participate because they can only vote for ballot questions or constitutional amendments.

Not that they're not important, but they're not real drivers to voter turnout.

Also, in some election cycles, you have a lot more competition.

Competition drives turnout in elections, and right now we don't really have a very competitive primary on the Republican side or the Democratic side for the top of the ticket for US President.

- Right, for president.

So normally we would expect, I think, a greater participation in the primary in a presidential year.

However, some have suggested that because the Pennsylvania primary is so late in that campaign, that oftentimes they feel kind of left out of that decision making process, correct?

- That's right, and there was an effort earlier this year to move the primary, one, because it conflicts with Passover.

It overlaps with the first day of Passover, which is a real concern.

And the other thing is to move Pennsylvania up in the batting order.

There was a real push and has been for years, especially Republicans in the Senate, to move Pennsylvania up in that batting order to make Pennsylvania more relevant in the presidential primaries cycle.

- But those efforts did not yield any kind of result.

It just didn't go anywhere.

- The Senate and the House did not agree on a date for moving the primary, so the primary is April 23rd.

- The Senate and the House didn't agree?

What a surprise!

Borys, tell us about the races for the two open seats in the house.

- The two open seats in the State House.

- [Larry] Yes, the State House.

- The 120th in Luzerne County, which is Aaron Kaufer's seat.

There are three Republicans and two Democrats who are running for those positions.

And then there's an open seat in Wayne and Pike County.

So 139th, that's Joe Adams' seat, he resigned a month ago for personal reasons.

And there's a special election on the ballot April 23rd, and there's also a nominating contest for the same race and those are the two most competitive contents.

- Well, let's stay with 139 a bit because you said there is a special election.

Now what I could see in that is that there's going to be confusion there between the primary and the special election occurring at the same time.

Could you give us a little bit more information on that and more details?

- So the Republican candidate is Jeffrey Olsommer, who's a township supervisor in Wayne County.

And the other candidate, the Democrat, is Robin Skibber, who is a former Pike County Area Agency on Aging Director.

And they are in the special election.

So there's, I believe, one ballot for them.

And then there's a separate ballot for the primary where Jeffrey Olsommer faces Matt Contreras for the Republican nomination.

And Robin is opposed for the Democratic nomination and whoever wins the primary.

So the special election is to serve out the rest of Adams' term through November 30th, and then the nominating contest is to choose who the candidates will be on the November 5th ballot to take over December 1st.

- So the seat for 120, that's the Aaron Kaufer seat.

So can we lay out those candidates as well, for what's happening there?

- The Republicans are Brenda Pugh, Lee Ann McDermott, and Patrick Musto.

And the Democrats are John Morgan and Fern Leard.

Fern Leard ran a couple years ago.

Lee Ann McDermott's known 'cause she's a county councilwoman.

Those are the five candidates for those seats.

- Were you surprised, I mean, you've been covering politics a long time.

Were you surprised that there was such interest in that seat?

- No, it's a competitive seat.

It was held by a Democrat before Aaron had it for multiple terms.

- That would be Phyllis Mundy.

- Phyllis Mundy had that seat, so it's still a relatively competitive seat and one that the Democrats think they can flip, and they're gonna put some money into that race.

- Dr. Widestrom, tell us about your work and the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters and what are the purpose, the goals, the mission?

- Sure, so our primary purpose is really to empower voters to be active citizens in our democracy.

So the first thing we do is try to provide information about access to the polls, how to vote, how to register to vote, how to request your mail-in or absentee ballots, where your polling places are.

We have a nonpartisan website to help voters do that, vote411.org.

You can type in your address and learn all about your local races, your polling place, check your registration status.

So that is the first thing.

We also advocate broadly for expanded access to the right to vote.

So thinking about the 1.3 million unaffiliated registered voters in the state of Pennsylvania, which means they can't vote in the primary elections except for in these instances.

And I agree, the special election might be confusing because they can vote in a special election, but they can't vote in the primary and that will confuse folks.

- So let me ask this, in that instance, when the person, independent voter, oftentimes you register unaffiliated, but most of us just refer to it as an independent.

And they go into the polling place and they have to check in.

Will the poll worker instruct them about how to go about filling out that ballot?

- Yeah, the poll workers, we also recruit poll workers and help work with a committee of 70 on poll worker training.

And so poll workers are instructed, and there's a great deal of information when voters check in and the poll book.

If an unaffiliated voter shows up to vote in a primary election, they won't be allowed to do so.

And the poll book will say that.

So they won't be given a ballot.

In this case, they can vote in this special election.

And so as Borys said, there will be a special election ballot and a primary ballot.

And so poll workers will have training and information about that and can make that distinction when the voter approaches the table.

- Mr. Schmidt, are all of the counties in Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth using electronic voting machines?

- Every county in the commonwealth, all 67 of them in the past several years, if not a little bit more, have replaced their in-person voting systems with something that results in a voter verifiable paper ballot record of every single vote that's cast.

Elections have changed a lot in the last several years, and they changed for the better.

They have never been more safe and secure.

And those records are used in not one, but two audits after every election to ensure that the numbers add up and that the results are accurate.

- And that was a change.

I remember voting first time electronically, and there was no piece of paper that came out of that.

You just kind of figured that it would register much as when we buy something on Amazon or something of that sort, we just took it by faith.

So with these new ballots that do come out and are optically read, is that correct?

- Yeah, there's really two systems from a couple different vendors, but either voters complete a hand-marked paper ballot, which is a pre-printed ballot where they make their selections and it's fed into a tabulator.

And obviously that paper ballot is used to tabulate the votes and used in the audit.

Or they use something called a ballot marking device, which is almost like a great big iPad that it functions essentially like a pen.

It's filling those ovals in for you more or less, and you see the printed out ballot to verify that those are your selections before casting your vote.

- While we're discussing the upcoming Pennsylvania primary election.

Tallying the votes is a bottom-up operation, starting at your polling place and working its way up through your county to the state level.

And every county has an election bureau or department, one county in the WVIA viewing area seemingly has difficulty retaining a head of elections for a substantial amount of time.

Since 2019, Luzerne County has had five directors of the Bureau of Elections, WVIA Sarah Scinto introduces us to the latest public servant to take on this job, Emily Cook.

(title whooshing) - It's going well.

We're wrapping up our ballot proofing today.

We start our logic and accuracy testing next week.

And in general, preparations are going well.

We've got our supplies ordered, which means we have ordered our paper for this election.

And in general, all of the preparations have been going well.

- [Sarah] Emily Cook stepped into the role of acting director of elections in February after the previous director resigned.

She's worked in the office since 2021.

The Luzerne County Bureau of elections, like elections offices around the state has experienced high turnover in recent years.

Cook says institutional knowledge is lost when longtime elections workers leave.

- I think part of it is due to the political climate that we live in and just the social climate of being an election worker at this point is not terribly attractive as a position.

You take a lot of hits in an election director role.

I think for me, the best thing that I can do is just keep doing the job.

- [Sarah] This will be cook's first presidential election at the Luzerne County office.

She's hoping to continue improving the election process in the county and learn from past mistakes.

But anything can happen on election day.

- 186 different precincts in our county, which have poll workers in every location.

We have equipment in every location.

And Luzerne County is not a small area.

It is a pretty large area geographically.

You can see I have a map in the corner of my office that shows just how much distance there is between one point and another.

So you've got about 100,000 factors that could impact any of those locations up to and including, we've experienced a fire at a polling location or road work that's shut down access to locations and other things like that, that could potentially become a problem.

Those are the factors that I worry about, not the factors that are directly related to what we do in this office.

- [Sarah] For "Keystone Edition Reports," I'm Sarah Scinto, WVIA news.

- Well, Mr. Schmidt, you are in the State Department and you have to ensure the integrity of the election, and election integrity has really come into question over the last, oh, I guess four years now, even a little bit before that.

So tell us about the efforts that the State Department makes to make sure that our elections are safe, secure, that every vote is tallied appropriately.

- You know, just as we just spoke about, elections have changed a lot and it's no wonder people have questions about elections.

And even though they've changed for the better, it's clear that many of them have lost faith in the confidence of elections.

They have consumed nonstop misinformation and disinformation seeking to undermine confidence in the election results.

And it's important that we treat allegations of voter fraud or voting irregularities seriously.

I would say Republican City Commissioner in Philadelphia for 10 years heavily focused on election integrity, conducted hundreds of investigations.

And when it does occur, which is very rare and every vote is precious, a single vote that is cast that should not be cast is significant and warrants investigation and prosecution if that's what occurred.

But it's important not to, by any means, lose confidence in election results.

It's important to not be dissuaded from voting because all the noise and ugliness around it can last several years.

- Dr. Widestrom, you had shared with me off camera some interesting statistics regarding the election fraud.

Can you let us all know about that?

How often does it happen?

- Sure, so there have been a number of studies done into various types of election fraud.

So whether be in person, so somebody showing up and impersonating somebody and trying to vote as a person or mail in or absentee ballot voter fraud.

And in all of the studies, the instances of documented, verifiable, actionable voter fraud is infinitesimal.

So in-person voting fraud in a study of a billion votes, only 31 instances were discovered.

And only a small number of those were actual attempts to commit voter fraud.

The other of the 31 were like people showing up at the wrong polling place by mistake.

- So 31 out of a billion.

- In person voting fraud instances.

And we have similar data on mail-in voting fraud.

Over millions of votes cast, infinitesimal.

- You know, the practice of vote by mail has become quite controversial, even though we've had that method for years with absentee, especially for military, for students and what have you.

And in some counties, the method has become a hot topic.

So what is the League's position on vote by mail?

- Yeah, so we support any opportunity for voters to express their voice.

And there's a number of reasons why need no excuse mail-in ballots or absentee ballots, whether it be family and life circumstances or work circumstances that just don't provide the ability to get to the polls on election day.

And so we fully support safe and secure means of voting, but also an expansive opportunity for our voters to vote.

And some folks just need other opportunities for voting other than in-person voting on election day.

- Borys, we talked earlier about unaffiliated or independents not being able to vote in a primary election, but what is the primary purpose of a primary election?

- To nominate Democrats and Republicans, that's the primary purpose.

And I have a regular source who calls me and says, "I'm an independent, why am I paying for this?"

And he complains constantly that he can't vote on the primary election day.

And yet the state subsidizes that, that's an issue.

I mean, it's not a new issue, it's gone on for decades, and the problem is the will and the legislature to do it, there's no pressure on the legislature to do it.

They're all Republicans and Democrats.

Until there's something like the pay raise of 2006, I think you won't see that change in Pennsylvania.

- But earlier, according to Dr. Widestrom, there's 1.5 million who are- - 1.3.

- Yeah, 1.3 million who are unaffiliate, and Mr. Schmidt, what is the state department's view on this?

Some people, as Borys pointed out, and I've heard it myself too, from friends and family, "I'm disenfranchised," so what is the view from the state department on the possibility of that, just that question, are independents disenfranchised?

Didn't they really disenfranchise themselves by choice?

Is there any kind of plan or motivation or any kind of prospect of having open primaries in Pennsylvania?

- When there is legislation, as there has been in the past, the State Department, our Department of State takes a look at it to determine whether it's something that can be implemented or not.

And when there is legislation related to this matter, we obviously look at it to see, but it's a policy question at the end of the day, it's something that the legislature and the governor would ultimately decide.

- That's right, so the way I would see it coming about would be somehow some kind of grassroots movement from independents themselves to force the question.

But there are many states who have open primaries.

They take various forms.

Does the League of Women Voters in Pennsylvania have a position on open primaries?

- Yeah, we advocate for open primaries.

And so there are two ways you could have an open primary.

There are sort of open primaries where anybody can walk into a voting poll and decide they wanna vote in the Democratic primary, the Republican primary, regardless of your registration.

And then others are where unaffiliated voters can walk in and decide which primary they would like to vote in.

And the League supports opening our primaries so those 1.3 million voters have a say.

And frankly, in studies done, only about 5% of independent voters are truly independent.

Most people tend to lean pretty consistently one way or another.

So even if they wanted to remain unaffiliated or independent, they would likely lean toward the party that they would be inclined to be supporting anyway.

So it would be an enfranchisement opportunity.

- One thing that has happened the last 15 years is there's been a tremendous increase in the number of non Republicans and non Democrats.

It's pretty much doubled in the last 15 years.

And so that's a sign that we may be heading toward that someday.

- So, Mr. Schmidt, do we have an idea of a percentage of eligible voters that are registering unaffiliated?

- And you're right, and the number has increased significantly.

In some counties like Philadelphia County, it has at times passed the number of registered Republicans in Philadelphia County.

But it's also important to remember that that universe is not by any means monolithic, they are really defined by being not republicans or not Democrats.

It includes everyone from Libertarians to Socialists, and people who are just interested in their civic duty and casting their vote and making their vote heard that are not ideological in nature.

And it's a pretty big universe of voters.

The number's been increasing and with automatic voter registration, which the Shapiro administration brought about recently.

- [Larry] Yes, recently.

- It is shown an almost equal number of Democrats, Republicans, and non-affiliated registering to vote.

It's almost an exact pie chart with three equal pieces.

And it's interesting to see.

- They are very influential, the general elections.

Which way they go decide state elections.

- And of course, for instance the presidential election, that contest is gonna be decided by about 2% of the voters.

- The number of unaffiliated voters has gone up.

So it's about 1.2 in the 2020 primary and general election's up to 1.3 this year.

- So about out of eligible voters, do you have a number of how many people are actually registered in the state?

Dr. Widestrom, you have that number?

- Yes, so there are 8.7 million registered voters in Pennsylvania, that's about 67% of folks who are eligible to register, are registered to vote.

And about 15% of those, that 1.3 million are the unaffiliated.

44.7 are Democrats and about 40% are Republicans.

- Interesting.

So primary elections generally witness low turnout.

How can we, and I'll start with with you, Secretary Schmidt, how can we persuade more people to come out and exercise their right to vote?

- And it is interesting to have a juncture in our country's history where there is a lot on the line.

And I know we all say, and it is sincere, and it is true, that every election is important, but there is no doubt that they've never been more important.

And that by voting, you are participating and strengthening our representative democracy.

And whether you're motivated out of civic duty or you're motivated because you don't like what you're hearing or you really like what you're hearing, it's really competition that drives turnout.

It's why counties that are lopsided, overly Republican or overly Democratic, frequently lack in voter turnout because there isn't that competition, there's not that tension.

Our whole system of government is set up based on that, on that competition and that you end up with the best candidate among those competitors.

- And I've heard that as well, Dr. Widestrom from friends and acquaintances and people I just bump into because of redistricting.

The comment is, "My vote doesn't count, so why should I vote?"

- Yeah, so especially in house assembly elections, even in our house congressional elections, in the state of Pennsylvania, incumbents in the house and the state level are about 90% likely to win reelection.

So it can feel that way.

And yet I think that there are a couple of important reasons why folks should vote.

One is that participating in the process actually helps build trust in the process.

Going to your polls, you see how the process works.

You see the poll workers, you see the eyes on the system and on the process it helps build trust I think.

It is fulfilling a civic duty.

There's lots of people who have fought for the right to vote, right?

Our organization came about fighting for women's rights to vote.

So participating and sort of honoring that legacy.

And also, is it 10,000 hours to build a habit?

It's also about building a habit to vote.

And one of the benefits of our democracy is that we have a lot of opportunity to participate.

And so we vote in our primaries, we vote in our general elections, we vote in off year elections, we vote in for ballot questions.

We have a lot of opportunity to have a say in what our government does for us.

And it's really important to show up and let 'em know what we think.

- Well, that's about it.

We've run out of time and I'd like to thank you for participating in the conversation and I want to thank you for watching.

For more information, please visit wvia.org/keystonereports.

And remember, you can rewatch this episode on demand anytime online at wvia.org.

For "Keystone Edition Reports," I'm Larry Vojtko.

Thank you for watching.