By SARIT LASCHINSKY

Special to The Press

The Lehigh County Election Board had a public meeting Aug. 21 at the Lehigh County Government Center to discuss an Aug. 11 letter from Enid Santiago and her attorney, Steve Masters, calling for the decertification of the June 2 Primary Election for the 22nd Legislative District.

Masters, who attended virtually, said the election should be decertified after discrepancies were found between the number of cast ballots and reported voters in the state-controlled voter database.

Masters said at the 1st Ward, 1st District polling place, there were two additional votes cast than could be accounted for by the number of voters who signed in-person.

At the 3rd Ward, 1st District location, there were 27 cast ballots whose voters were not accounted for in the poll book.

“In our view that suggested the possibility that 29 fraudulent ballots had been cast in the election,” he said.

The margin of victory in the 22nd District race between Santiago and incumbent Peter Schweyer was 55 votes.

Masters reiterated the board had found “suspicious circumstances” regarding the conduct of election judge Everett “Erika” Bickford.

The information was referred to District Attorney Jim Martin and Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

“For all those reasons, there has been a growing level of outrage among voters in the 22nd Legislative District with the sincere, very legitimate belief this election was rigged,” he said.

Masters also presented two requests.

The first was removal of Bickford as a judge of election.

“I believe your failure to seek such an order to remove her at once will shock the citizens of Allentown and will be a stain on the election in November that may reverberate throughout the nation,” he said.

The second was for a forensic postelection audit of at least the 1st and 3rd Wards.

Regarding vote counts, Chief Clerk Tim Benyo said there had been 36 “abandoned transactions” which he said could be due to voters not completing the sign-in procedures in the 3rd Ward, 1st District, of which 27 were Democrats and nine Republicans.

He said pictures are captured of voters’ signatures, and the name and corresponding signature of a checked-in voter are provided in the overall report.

“Those signatures are associated with people who were supposed to vote,” he said about the 27 contested ballots at that location.

He added that the updated statistics and information uploaded to the Department of State the day before the meeting were accurate.

Benyo said he could not comment on the two unaccounted ballots in the 1st Ward.

Masters addressed his request for a forensic audit.

”Restricting it to the 1st and 3rd Wards may not provide the level of confidence in the voters that auditing the entire 22nd Legislative District race would do,” he said.

The board initially looked into whether Lehigh County Controller Mark Pinsley would be able to carry out the audit.

Ultimately, Lehigh County Executive Phillips Armstrong discovered Pinsley was prohibited from doing so by the county charter.

Instead, Armstrong proposed a motion for an independent audit of the two wards, with the auditor to be identified at a later date.

Members of the audience pushed back against the board’s motion.

Allentown resident Patrick Palmer said the board needed to find resolutions for the problems.

He said the board’s actions and responses were giving him “the feeling where it’s a bunch of ‘We do this, we can’t do that,’ to the point of where our voices aren’t being heard anymore.

“This situation is starting to feel like we’re running into another impasse before you even answered our last question.”

Sharon Finnegan said it was “outrageous” the subject of decertification was not being discussed.

“If that’s not something this board can do, then you can certainly start with the recommendation to whomever needs to that,” she told the election board. “To not even have that on the table is insane and outrageous. People have lost complete faith in this.”

Allentown School board member Linda Vega asked whether the board could decertify the election given the “obvious, and clear and proven voter fraud.”

“The real problem is we continue to play in the good old boys’ club,” Vega said.

Deputy Solicitor Sarah Murray said the authority to decertify the results was with the Court of Common Pleas.

She said Masters was correct in stating the board could serve in a quasi-judicial role, as it had in limited legal cases.

“[But] this is not one of them,” Murray said.

Armstrong said according to the Election Code, Santiago’s campaign had 20 days to file with the court to contest the results.

“At no point was I told that Enid Santiago had other avenues to pursue a complaint about the fraudulent election,” Erin Keller said.

Keller alleged she saw fraud being committed on a Facebook livestream June 2 and contacted the FBI and Attorney General’s office to file a formal complaint.

“The clock is running out because the elections are in less than two months,” Victor Martinez, an audience member said. “We’re running out of time, and we keep having another hearing, and another hearing.

“We don’t get anywhere so it seems like we’re just playing around chasing our tails with no consequence and no ability to do anything.”

Armstrong said the board would follow a “step by step procedure” starting with an audit of the two wards, which would extend further if discrepancies were uncovered.

Palmer asked why the board had certified the election to begin with, noting Benyo had testified at a July hearing to having witnessed improper conduct by Bickford.

“Did he not come to you and tell you there were situations that happened?” Palmer asked.

Murray said provisions in the election code state after an initial certification is completed, if no claim of fraud is brought to court in five days, which she says did not occur, the election’s final certification is completed.

“There was no complaint within those five days,” Armstrong said.

“So, you’re saying there was no way to stop this from happening, unless someone told her how to stop this from happening, because this seems like one big setup to me,” Palmer responded.

Santiago said election board members, along with Benyo, had been sent a complaint by her campaign on June 5.

“Everyone was notified and knew about the complaint, knew Tim Benyo was my witness of what we just witnessed,” she said, “Yes, the entire board was aware of what happened prior to certifying the election, which is why we’re so disappointed at everybody, so frustrated. This was not done by accident.”

The election board ultimately approved the motion for an independent audit of the 1st and 3rd Wards before the meeting was adjourned for an unrelated executive session.