Andy Close
WARREN, Pa. – Warren County Commissioner Ben Kafferlin said an election funding bill struck by Pennsylvania lawmakers last week is intended to stop the controversial
“Zuckerbucks” private election funding, but that won’t affect Warren County.
“They’re calling it ‘Zuckerbucks’,” Kafferlin said, which refers to large donations from the Center for Tech and Civic Life which received large donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg. “Essentially non-profit entities were funding county elections. We’ve never seen anything like that here. At best, you could say the worst thing that ever happened here is some people tried to sell cookies for their local church during the election.”
Forest County Director of Elections Jean Ann Hitchcock said private funding wasn’t something being done in the Commonwealth’s third-smallest county.
“We don’t do that here, it has no impact on us,” Hitchcock said.
In exchange for counties not taking private election funding, the Commonwealth legislature is allocating $45 million to help fund election offices across Pennsylvania, something that has usually been the purview of local counties.
“They did create a $45 million pot for election administrators, which they’ve never done before,” Kafferiln said. “It’s basically a way to get counties to comply with certain best practices based on legislative perspective. Thankfully, Warren County already does this, so it’s not going to affect us a whole lot.”
Warren and Forest Counties would receive just a fraction of that $45 million with Warren County potentially receiving $135,359 or $5.15 per its 26,285 registered voters as of the May 2022 primary.
Forest County would potentially receive $17,195 in funding, the second-smallest total in the state behind only Cameron County’s $15,400.
Philadelphia County would receive the most money at $5,400,695 with 13 counties in the state receiving over $1 million. Counties must apply for the funds and when applying they must agree to certain requirements including the ban on private election funding as well as agreeing to start counting mail-in ballots at 7 a.m. on election day and to continue counting mail-in ballots without interruption until the counting is complete. Counties have until Aug. 15 to apply for the funding.
Kafferlin believes that if not all 67 counties apply for the funding Warren County could end up with a little bit more than what it is currently allocated.
“This is not going to be hugely different for us,” Kafferlin said. “It may potentially lead to some revenue for us, especially if other counties aren’t able to participate.”
While Kafferlin and Hitchcock don’t seem to have any issues with the legislation that isn’t the case across the Commonwealth.
“It’s ill-conceived legislation that, really, it’s just awful,” Philadelphia elections chief Lisa Deeley told SpotlightPA. If they wanted to give us more money, they should have just given us more money, no strings.”
The bill passed the Commonwealth Senate by a 46-4 vote July 7 but only passed the House 103-96 with opposition coming from most Democratic lawmakers as well as a few conservative Republicans.
All area representatives in the House voted in favor of the bill including Kathy Rapp, who represents Warren and Forest Counties in the PA House’s 65th District, Curt Sonney, who represents the 4th District, which includes parts of eastern Erie County, Martin Causer, who represents the 67th District, which includes McKean County, R. Lee James, who represents Venango County in the 64th District, and Michael Armanini, who represents the 75th District which comprises Elk County among others.
Neither Kafferlin nor Hitchcock have an issue with the counting of mail-in ballots starting at 7 a.m. and running continuously uninterrupted until all are counted.
“It’s not going to have any impact on us,” Hitchcock said. “We only had 300 (mail-in ballots) maybe in the primary, so it doesn’t take that long.”
The same is true in Warren County as well.
“We start at 9 a.m., so moving it two hours isn’t going to be a big deal,” Kafferlin said.
