LOCK HAVEN, PA – The Clinton County Commissioners, as the Clinton County Board of Elections, on Monday certified the results of the November 3 election and sent them on to Harrisburg for statewide certification.
Their vote was 2-0 to certify as commissioner Jeff Snyder was in Harrisburg for a meeting. Board chairman Miles Kessinger and board member Angela Harding did so despite a request from a local Republican poll watcher to delay certification. Through a Monday letter to the election board, Tim Stiffler of Mill Hall asked the board to not certify the tally until they verified mail-in ballot signatures.
Stiffler also said he had observed the opening of mail-in ballots at the Piper Building on election day and said poll watchers were too far away to read the ballots or their envelopes, noting precautions due to COVID-19.
Chief clerk Jann Meyers read the Stiffler letter at the virtual meeting and the commissioners had no comment. County voter registrar Maria Boileau reported on the final county tally, virtually unchanged from the election night count. It did include 321 provisional ballots.
Harding thanked Boileau and her staff for their work, stating they processed the ballots with “a fine-toothed comb,” and the official canvass was “done correctly.”
The certification meeting lasted five minutes.
The Stiffler letter:
To: Clinton County PA Board of Elections
From: Tim Stiffler, Mill Hall, PA
I am a poll watcher who observed the opening of mail-in ballots on election day at the Clinton County, PA administration building. I also attended all the other canvass events that occurred the first week of the process but was unable to attend the following 2 weeks due to work commitments. As such, I would like the following concerns to be addressed and added to the public record:
1. The arrangement of seating for observers and precautions due to Covid-19 was not conducive to proper inspection of ballots. We were too far away for anyone to read the ballots or ballot envelopes.
2. The county followed the court order to not reject ballots due to signatures. Due to this and the seating no signatures were compared to the voter registration signatures.
3. The mail in ballots in Clinton County were 24% of the total vote.
4. In our small county with less than 18,000 total votes, there was keen interest by Democrats from outside the state for the last 2 weeks of the canvass.
5. Reports of wide spread fraud throughout Pennsylvania were made possible by the court orders and rule changes that violate the laws enacted by the PA legislature.
6. The court order is still facing legal challenges.
By my reading of the PA court order, Clinton County has fully complied. The signatures were not verified and the ballots were randomized. The court order is complete. I see no reason why we can not now check the mail-in envelope signatures versus the registration signature to:
-Measure the effects of the Governor’s order our election
-Determine the level of fraud (if any) in our county
I recommend the Board of Elections for Clinton County perform a verification of mail-in ballot signatures against the voter registration signatures prior to certifying the elections. This is the only way that I and most of Clinton County would feel that there was no voter fraud. Or please provide a reason why this is not possible.
I personally would not feel good about certifying an election where the integrity of one quarter of the ballots was unknown and intentionally not verified.
