Former Lehigh County Commissioner Dean Browning used the public comment portion of the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners Jan. 26 meeting to share results of what he described as an investigation of voting at the county government center’s drop box during the last election.

According to Browning, more ballots were collected from the drop box in the lobby of the administration building than there were people who walked up to the ballet drop box.

He said the Lehigh County Republican Committee reviewed videotapes for all of the drop boxes in Lehigh County and counted the number of voters who used the drop box at the Lehigh County Government Center.

Browning claimed 1,587 ballots were placed in the ballot box but added his team had counted only 1,280 people actually walking up the drop box.

“There were multiple people who dropped off multiple ballots,” Browning alleged.

He referred commissioners to a spreadsheet, containing more details, he had distributed.

He said he had a screenshot or picture showing a video with at least one individual holding “a handful of ballots.”

Browning said it is illegal for an individual to deposit ballots for another person unless the person voting has filled out and filed a designated agent form that authorizes a second party to deposit another person’s ballot.

“If everyone was following the law, [Lehigh County] should have had at least 307 certificates for just the activity at the government center for the period in question,” Browning said.

Instead, according to Browning, Lehigh County had only 35 designated agent forms on file for the total period of the election covering all polling places.

“There are two solutions,” Browning said.

One solution he suggested was to end the drop box policy, adopted, he said, because of the COVID-19 emergency, which he described as “now over with.”

The other was to place election officials and poll workers at all drop boxes to ensure voters with more than one ballot have the designated agent forms on file with the county.

“Doing nothing is not an option if you want to start the process of restoring confidence in our election process,” Browning said.

“The problem is that mail-in ballots allow a large portion of the election to take place outside the oversight of election officials,” Browning said in a later interview. “Allowing drop boxes just makes it easier for the votes to be harvested.”

The commissioners, as is customary, did not respond to Browning’s comments.