Elections examined, critiqued

Many Allegheny County precincts, including Pitt precincts, experienced unusually high turnouts… Many Allegheny County precincts, including Pitt precincts, experienced unusually high turnouts in last year’s election. Waits at the Towers precinct lasted hours for some students, with lines stretching into David Lawrence Hall.

A two-person commission assigned to examine such election issues has reported its findings to County Executive Dan Onorato, according to commission member Paul Supowitz, Pitt’s associate vice chancellor for commonwealth and city/county relations.

Supowitz joined the commission shortly after the general election last Nov. 2. Onorato, a Democrat, appointed Supowitz to the commission. County Councilman Dave Fawcett, a Republican, appointed Robert King, an attorney at the Downtown firm Reed Smith.

“I think we suggest looking at a lot of areas to make sure changes are made,” Supowitz said, citing possible changes in provisional ballot procedures and the training of election judges.

He added that problems had not been confined to precincts near universities, but also affected “certain suburban areas that had been high-growth areas.”

Both King and Supowitz declined to state specific suggestions from the commission, but King said the commission’s finding would soon become public.

“I don’t have any question that [Onorato] is going to make this as transparent as possible,” King said. “I know that the Administrative Services Department and county services have taken our findings very seriously, and some of them they’ve already begun to implement.”

King said the commission sent its findings to Onorato, Fawcett, the county’s legal department and the Department of Administrative Services, which oversees the county elections division.

While King said he and Supowitz “solicited information from every group we could,” some activists contend that the commission has not acted openly enough.

Celeste Taylor, policy director of Project Vote, a get-out-the-vote organization, said Supowitz and King ignored the input of her group and others, including Everybody Vote and the Election Protection Coalition. She cited a public hearing on election irregularities held Dec. 15 last year, which the two commission members did not attend.

King said he solicited comments and videotape of the public hearing from Taylor, but that she sent him neither.

Taylor contends that the commission should have set up its own hearings.

“I’m shocked that they think it’s my job to spoon-feed them,” she said. “I’m shocked that they’ve abdicated their responsibilities. It’s not transparent, and it’s not accountable, and I don’t know what they’re doing.”

While King and Supowitz conceded that they did not hold any of their own public hearings, they said they made reasonable efforts to seek public input, appearing at county hearings in which citizens could voice their input.

“We have not had our own public hearings, but I do think we had a fair hearing of the issues, though,” Supowitz said.

Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell has also established a task force to review last year’s election, but it has yet to publish any findings. It holds public meetings every two weeks in Harrisburg.