Pennsylvania swing county to keep ballot drop boxes after controversy

A battleground county in north-eastern Pennsylvania will have ballot drop boxes this fall after its county manager faced pressure and reversed her decision to eliminate them.

The announcement on Friday came less than a month after Romilda Crocamo, the county manager in Luzerne county, said she was getting rid of the county’s four drop boxes over concerns the county could not secure them. “I cannot secure the drop boxes. And, you know, sometimes I have to make difficult decisions,” she said in an interview last month.

But voting rights groups sued Crocamo last week, saying she could not unilaterally get rid of the drop boxes.

Elections in the county are jointly overseen by a five-member board of elections who are responsible for setting election policies, and the county manager, who is responsible for personnel. A hearing in the case had been scheduled for Monday. Voters in the state – a critical one for both Kamala Harris and Joe Biden – have already begun receiving and returning mail-in ballots.

Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Michelle Henry, sent a letter to Crocamo advising her that county board of elections had the power to set policies over drop boxes.

An agreement filed on Sunday in the Luzerne county court of common pleas says Crocamo does not concede she is under a legal obligation to deploy drop boxes, but that she won’t block their deployment this election cycle.

“This is a huge victory for Luzerne county voters,” said Alisha Hoffman-Mirilovich, the executive director of In This Together NEPA, which sued the county over drop boxes.

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“All Pennsylvanians have the freedom to choose how they cast their ballots – in person on Election Day, by mail-in ballot, or by using a drop box. We applaud the Luzerne County Board of Elections for making drop boxes accessible in Luzerne County since 2020, and we applaud the County Manager for reversing course in the best interest of voters throughout the county,” Hoffman-Mirilovich said in a statement.

Crocamo said in a statement that drop boxes at two county facilities were deployed “and under video surveillance”. She said the county was still waiting on approval from two private locations.

“While Ms Crocamo remains quite concerned about security, manpower, and fiscal issues associated with deployment of ballot drop boxes in Luzerne County, she agrees that given the importance of the November 5th election, the residents of Luzerne County should have every opportunity to attend to their important civic duty and vote in the upcoming election,” Mark Cedrone, her lawyer, said in a statement.