Down River 4/22

By John Lipez

Step Up, Answer the Call:
There have to be 25 Clinton County folks ready to contact the county’s voter registration office and take one for the team; namely volunteering to serve as a poll worker for the May 18 primary election.

County voter registrar Maria Boolean put out the call last week for some 25 precinct workers for the primary. Qualifications are pretty simple: be a registered voter in Clinton County. That means there are way over 20,000 of us who qualify.

It is a long day, election day, checking in before the poll opening time of 7 a.m. and offering assistance to the voters through the 8 p.m. closing time; then it’s off to the county’s Piper Building to bring in the results. The compensation is not great, $145, but not shabby either for assisting in a noble cause. There was a day precinct workers would have a small feast waiting for them at the court house/Garden Building/ Piper Building (county election night headquarters over the years): the world’s finest meats and cheeses, pies, cookies, etc. There was enough to last even until very late at night when the girls from West Keating Township pulled in with official word on how the six registered voters from the county’s northwest outpost had cast their ballots.

The days of those semi-sumptuous, post-poll-closing feeds are gone, but the need for Election Day assistance remains.

On the subject of voting, the most recent numbers, as of last Friday, from registrar Boileau show that Republicans continue to maintain a significant registration edge in Clinton County over their Democratic counterparts. How significant? 11,789 Republicans to 7,332 Democrats.

Those numbers continue a trend begun in 2016. It was in February of that year that Republicans had overtaken Democrats in the county; this was some months before Donald Trump made his successful bid for the GOP nomination for president and well before his successful election that November.

Democrats had actually outnumbered Republicans in the county during the Barack Obama time in the White House, from roughly 2008 up until 2016. But as of Feb. 19, 2016, the GOP moved back on top, 8,880 to 8,849, and they’ve improved on that margin every year since, from 31 in the winter of 2016 to the current margin of more than 43-hundred.

How do we account for this? The Trump effect? What else could it be? And will the local GOP registration edge slowly diminish as he has lost the ability to tweet and doesn’t garner the headlines he did nonstop for four years? Or will his populist pitch continue to resonate locally. Just drive from Lock Haven to Williamsport and you’ll see plenty of Trump signs still blowing in the April breeze. There are a lot of variables at work here, from how well Joe Biden does as our President Number 46, to what kind of future legal actions might be lurking out there against the now deposed Number 45. Meanwhile we say to GOP county chairman Kurtes Smith, enjoy the ride!

Interestingly, while the number of GOP registrants goes up here at home, there is a different shift going on the northeastern part of Pennsylvania.

Specifically, it is in eastern Monroe County, just across the Delaware from New Jersey. A Philadelphia Inquirer story details the growth of Democrats in that part of the state, while the GOP adds to its registration margin in more rural parts; as the paper says, “The influx of out-of-staters has offset a steady stream of older, mostly white working-class voters leaving the Democratic Party across the state.”

The story uses the 2016 election as a benchmark. It says 28% of Monroe County voters who registered after the 2016 election are registered as Republicans, nine percentage points less than the 37 percent who registered before 2016. For Democrats, meanwhile, the change has been minimal, from 46% pre-2016 to 45% post-2016.

Across the state over the same time frame, Democrats have maintained a 6% edge over the GOP.

The reason for the Democratic gain in Monroe County, the story says, are people fleeing New York and New Jersey to the Poconos of Pennsylvania. The trend started in the 1970s with the completion of Interstate 80 and has continued, spurred by 9/11 and the Great Recession of 2008.

But back to the original thrust of the column: if you want to serve the county in a positive way a couple times a year, a precinct worker would be much appreciated by county government.

Here’s the invite, direct from voter registrar Boileau:
If you are interested in becoming a poll worker in your precinct, complete the poll worker interest form at www.votesPA.com/getinvolved. You can also contact Clinton County Voter Registration Office at 570-893-4019.
County officials will determine where and for what position you are most needed.

Requirements Poll workers work all day on Election Day, from before the polls open at 7 a.m. until after the polls close at 8 p.m. In addition, you will be asked to attend a training session before the election. Poll workers are paid for their time on Election Day and to attend the training session.

Do you know someone who sounds perfect for this kind of job? Perhaps you would like to involve members of your church, club or civic organization in this important work. You can direct interested candidates to the Clinton County Voter Registration and Elections Office at 570-893-4019.

Sounds good to me; how ‘bout you?