Dear editor:

I was a candidate affected by the Northampton County voting machine issue. I would like to provide some additional information that appears to have not made the county news conference or news outlets.

Sequence of events: I greeted voters at my polling location all day (Bethlehem Wards 14-2/14-2 at Wesley United Methodist Church on Center Street). Once the problem on the retention question was identified, the machines were “shut down” and they shifted to paper ballots. They quickly ran out of paper ballots at Ward 14-2 before the machines were turned back on; they then told voters they could not vote, were turned away with no record of names or how many were refused voting, and told to LEAVE AND COME BACK LATER. By this time, news outlets started reporting the issue. Once the machines were turned back on, voting officials informed people to vote opposite their answer on the electronic machine, then once the issue was better identified they changed their instructions saying the printed votes on the machine paper were flipped but not the electronic vote.

Opinion: These facts appear to have not made the county news conference and are more than a clerical error. Will anybody be held accountable or punished? These affected election retention questions cannot and should not be validated. There should be zero error in these machines in order to reinforce voter confidence in our elections. But election after election, electronic machines have issues. Is this another case of micro voter suppression, turning away voters from the polls with media reports that dissuaded how many more follow-on voters from then even coming out to vote, influencing future voter apathy toward having their votes counted, and trusting results of other current ballot races? We will never truly know the numbers. While these issues in the end would not have changed my election result, faith in accuracy in our election process deserves better.

Thank you,

Jim Follweiler

Follweiler for City Council