Following more than five hours of testimony and a brief 10-minute executive session, Solicitor Emil Giordano announced the Lehigh County Board of Election’s decision to send Enid Santiago’s allegations of election fraud to Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

“This board finds credible evidence that Erika Bickford conducted activities which were possibly fraudulent, irregular and a violation of the election code and, as such, we are reporting the same to the district attorney and to the attorney general,” Giordano said.

He added a written opinion on the matter would be released.

In the June 2 Primary, Santiago came up 55 votes short of unseating incumbent state Rep. Peter Schweyer, D-22nd.

Santiago filed complaints about the election which included allegations of voters being turned away, late poll openings, workers who were unable to find voters’ hyphenated last names, incorrect ballots and violations committed by election judge Everett “Erika” Bickford.

Santiago testified she was dropping off snacks at the Government Center polling location when Bickford told her she was not supporting her within earshot of voters and poll workers.

Santiago said she also noticed Schweyer campaign pens on Bickford’s table in violation of election rules.

“At this point I’m looking at something she’s doing, something is catching my attention … Now I’m seeing her just filling something out,” Santiago said.

She said after asking Bickford about what she was filling out, Bickford allegedly replied, “‘Oh, it’s just a ballot. Somebody didn’t fill it in right and it rejected it, so I’m redoing it for them.’”

Santiago specified she saw Bickford in possession of both a completed and a blank ballot.

“She was not darkening circles as she already stated and admitted to the media,” Santiago said.

“I could see writings on the ballot … and then there is a blank ballot on top of that live ballot, and that’s the ballot that she was filling in.”

Later on, Santiago also said she had personally spoken to at least 12 voters who said they had their ballots taken by Bickford instead of putting them in the machines themselves.

Santiago said Chief Clerk Tim Benyo was nearby and “witnessed it at the same time I did.”

She said Benyo asked Bickford where the ballot’s voter was before telling her to stop.

During her testimony, Bickford said while she supported Schweyer and regards him as “extended family,” she denied making alterations or filling in blank ballots to support him during the election.

When asked by Santiago’s attorney Steve Masters whether she took voters’ ballots to enter them into the voting machine, Bickford said she “only did that for seniors,” and only did so because the voting machine was not reading the ballots properly.

Bickford said she trimmed the jagged tear lines off the bottom of an estimated 10-20 ballots so the voting machines would properly scan them.

She also admitted to darkening circles on “maybe 10” ballots.

“All I did was go over the ballot with the same pen and just darkened it,” Bickford said. “Had I whited out any ballots for Ms. Santiago and filled in Peter’s vote -which I didn’t - the machine would have rejected the whole ballot. I did not alter any ballots.”

Bickford also said she did not bring any campaign pens into the polling center, instead saying voters had brought them in from Schweyer’s legally-placed station outside the Government Center and left them on her table.

Regarding the incident described by Santiago, Bickford said she did not recall having two ballots.

“The voter had not left. That I remember.”

She also said voters were always present when she darkened circles.

Bickford was asked if she could recall any part of the election code that allowed her, as a judge, to physically alter a ballot by trimming it or by darkening circles on it.

“I didn’t know anything about that,” Bickford said. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

Benyo testified he entered the Government Center polling location originally to remove the Schweyer campaign pens from the area when he saw the actions described by Santiago.

“Miss Bickford had a pen and ballots, and it looked to me as if she was marking those ballots,” Benyo said, specifying he saw Bickford with one voted ballot and a blank one that she was doing something with.

Benyo said the ballot’s voter was no longer present at the polling location, and he told Bickford she couldn’t do that, and she needed to stop.

He did not take possession of the ballots because he lacked the authority to do so and acknowledged he did not know what happened to the ballots afterward.

He was asked by Masters about whether Bickford posed any danger in the future for engaging in voter fraud or ballot tampering the rest of the day.

Benyo replied in her nine years as a judge, her work wasn’t great.

“But, I never found her to be malicious or intentionally trying to do anything,” Benyo said, adding this was the determination for his decision not to alert others.

“I don’t think she thought she was doing anything wrong, and I don’t think she was doing anything to commit fraud in the sense of for one person or another,” he said.

Benyo testified he reported his observations to Assistant Solicitor John Ashcraft but said their discussion did not touch on the subject of escalating the issue to the district attorney, which Benyo said would need to be the election board’s determination.

Additionally, Benyo said while he did not have a personal conversation with the board about his observations, Santiago’s June 5 complaint, which included information about both of them witnessing Bickford with the ballots, was sent to the board June 8.

“This is going to be one of many victories we believe will be happening over the course of the next few weeks,” Masters said. “Today we established in a very strong and overwhelming way that the suppression, the fraud, the tampering with ballots, the efforts to tamp down the Latino community in Allentown’s days are numbered.”

He was asked about potential legal ramifications for Benyo.

“The evidence doesn’t appear to suggest Mr. Benyo was involved in any kind of active effort to suppress the vote, but did he make judgment calls that were clearly wrong,” he said, adding some witness testimony showed Benyo did the right thing.

Masters did not comment on possible legal options to decertify the election or hold a recount but said the hearing “was not the only card in the deck that we’re going to play with.”

Santiago thanked her supporters and the board of elections for referring the case onward.

“This could have been stopped,” Santiago said.

“We could have won the election on June 2 if this would have been stopped.”