Last night I sat on a stage in Springfield, PA for “Right Count: Election Integrity & The Public Trust,” presented by Broad + Liberty. It was 2 hours, with 6 panelists, an incredible moderator, and me in the role of the one who disagreed.
It stayed civil, of course. Nobody raised their voice in anger, as it should be. We traded real information in front of a room of people who gave up their Tuesday night, and as I later heard, a chance to see Stacy Garrity nearby, to hear from us.
While we were friendly and warm with each other, the disagreement was real. The men beside me spoke about elections as they were administered in the past, defending a version of the process that is simply gone or inefficient in the wake of Act 77, DMV automatic Voter Registration and 2020. The voters I talk to every day live in the one that replaced it.
Their core position, as I heard it: talk too loudly about election problems and you depress turnout. Voters hear the system is rigged and stay home.
I don’t buy it, and the evidence runs the other way. Turnout drops when the candidate is weak or the policy is bad. Nobody skips a race they believe in. Meanwhile, wherever integrity concerns have been raised hardest, engagement has gone up, with more poll watchers and more people asking how their county counts a ballot.
Here’s what that looks like on the ground. On September 16, the Chester County Board of Elections voted 2-1 to put unmanned 24 hour ballot drop boxes at the Government Services Center, the Exton Library and the Henrietta Hankin Library. Within twelve hours of the county changing its rules, I had a volunteer sign-up page live on the West Goshen Republican Committee’s website, with day and night shifts running October 12 through Election Day. No one told me to build it. No one had to. And the names that have come in are not the usual ones. I’ve seen new faces, people who never raised their hand for a committee meeting or a yard sign and who now want a shift watching a box at 2 a.m. If raising concerns depressed turnout, that sign-up sheet would be empty.
What bothered me more was the assumption sitting under the turnout argument. For years the grassroots has been painted as a problem to be managed, and the party has acted on that, locking volunteers out of whatever piece of the process it could reach. Those same people work the polls, knock the doors and fill the shifts. Shutting them out and then wondering why trust is low makes no sense to me.
Imagine what we could have done had those doors not been closed.
I’m grateful I was invited, and grateful the room was willing to hear from all sides.
Here is my closing statement, my advice to those administering our elections (transparency) and those who remain concerned (volunteer).
You can watch the full replay here.
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