(This article first appeared in Broad + Liberty.)
Delaware County election board member John McBlain has resigned, accusing the panel of rushing to add three “voter service centers” in deeply Democratic parts of the suburban Philadelphia county, something he said adds a blatant element of unfairness to the county’s election process.
McBlain, the lone Republican on Delaware County’s election board, has been the minority party appointee on the three-member election board since 2021. All members of the election board are appointed by the county council, which has been majority-Democratic since early 2020. A provision in the county’s charter ensures a check on the majority party, however, requiring that at least one member of the election board be a representative of the minority party.
At a special meeting of the election board on Friday, McBlain announced his intention to quit effective at the end of November, saying his decision was due to the board’s approval of three voter service centers in Upper Darby, Chester, and Chester Heights — all three Democratic strongholds.
“I thought I could serve on this board as long as I believed that we were making sure the elections were both secure and fair,” McBlain began at the end of the meeting on Friday, October 11. “I think the board has put their finger on the scale, so I don’t think that that fairness aspect is there anymore. Therefore, I — as much as I’m tempted to do it, as of effective immediately — I tender my resignation as of November 30th, 2024, so that I’ll complete my duties during the election certification process. But then I hereby resign from the board after that date.”
Voter service centers (VSCs) are essentially no different than “satellite election offices” which were controversial as far back as the 2020 general election. Whichever name is used, the creation is meant to be a literal extension of the county’s primary election office — the one place where a voter could register to vote, request a mail-in ballot, and return that ballot, all at the same time and same place. Philadelphia’s satellite election offices drew the ire of Republicans that year because Philadelphia refused to allow poll watchers anywhere inside, arguing that the locations were county election offices, so they could not be polling places. A Commonwealth Court ruling later upheld that argument to exclude poll watchers.
Like Philadelphia, Delaware County also used satellite election offices in 2020, the rationale largely being the pandemic. But according to McBlain, since 2020 “the only voter service center that we’ve maintained has been [the original and main election office] at the Media courthouse, and we’ve done that for each election, and that has been adequate.”
Now, McBlain says, the three VSCs seem to be created spur of the moment, and they’re in some of the deepest blue parts of the county.
“I don’t understand what has changed. We are down — I want to say by more than a third, if not two thirds — the number of applications for mail-in votes as we were in 2020,” McBlain said.
“There’s no more pandemic where we need to sort of spread things out. There’s not a need for it. The Media [county seat] office is more than adequately handling all requests for registration for applications to handle receipt of mail-in or absentee ballots,” McBlain told Broad + Liberty after his resignation. “No one has been calling publicly for [VSCs]. I don’t recall one member of the public attending a previous meeting this year [prior to Oct. 11] and advocating that we ought to have voter service centers for better service to the residents.”
In the September 24 meeting of the election board, county election director Jim Allen distinctly raised the possibility of adding VSCs, and listed only the sites of Upper Darby, Chester, and Chester Heights as possibilities.
But it’s what happened next that troubled McBlain the most.
McBlain says just after that meeting, he was talking to Allen. Then Donna Cantor, who McBlain says is a lawyer for the county Democratic party, approached them both.
“She [Cantor] came up to Mr. Allen and said to him that Colleen Guiney, the chairwoman of the [county] Democratic Party, had the list of volunteers to staff the voter services center ready. And I expressed shock,” McBlain said.
“I said, ‘I didn’t realize that we had decided that we were going to have voter services centers.’ And to Jim Allen’s credit, I mean, he immediately said ‘Well, listen at any voter services centers, we’re not going to have partisan volunteers staffing.’ But the Democratic Party was already prepared to staff these voter services centers at the September meeting where again, it was discussed almost in passing,” McBlain explained.
Election Director Allen did not directly refute that a conversation with Cantor happened, but he did offer his own context.
“[S]omeone approached me about the possible use of volunteers, in front of Mr. McBlain, and I turned away the suggestion. There were no specifics or a ‘list,’” he said.
Cantor did not respond to a request for comment asking if she disputed McBlain’s version of the conversation.
Guiney responded to a request for comment, but did not answer specific questions about whether the county Democrats were somehow prepared to staff VSCs before the VSCs were even discussed publicly and approved. Guiney mostly filibustered.
“It is a matter of public record that voter services centers are located in areas convenient to public transit, and in facilities already wired into the secure Delaware County communications system,” Guiney said. “We have had Voter Service Centers in previous elections, and surrounding counties have already opened Voter Service Centers this cycle. This matter has already been discussed on the publicly streamed Board of Elections leading up to the most recent meeting.
“The Democratic party has robust volunteer engagement, but the County is not using volunteers in the Voter Service Centers. Any Delaware County resident, of any political party is welcome to apply for a temporary position with the Board of Elections by contacting the Bureau of Elections for more information,” Guiney concluded.
For the public comment portion of the Oct. 11 special meeting, 21 total people rose to address the election board. A Broad + Liberty analysis showed five of them spoke about regular polling locations, one spoke about poll worker safety, thirteen spoke in favor of adding VSCs, and two expressed concerns about VSCs.
“So at the time of the [Oct. 11] meeting, it was clear that there was a partisan [effort] to pack the room in favor of this. There were dozens of Democratic committee people or volunteers,” McBlain said. “There were a dozen or more members of the League of Women voters who were nothing more than the provisional wing of the Delaware County Democratic Party who were present to speak in favor of it.”
A request for comment to the two other members of the election board, sent to them via the county’s spokesperson, was not returned.
Democratic State Representative and chair of the Upper Darby Democratic committee Heather Boyd was among the thirteen who spoke in favor of the measure. Others included a county Democratic committee member, someone that ran for delegate to the Democratic National Convention last May, as well as a donor to a local Democratic candidate, and the founder of a progressive group in Delco. Two persons from the League of Women Voters also spoke.
One Drexel Hill resident questioned the rationale of the satellite site locations. “I’m also concerned about the equity of these polling places, these satellite polling places. Where is the equity for the communities that have heavy Republican presence? Where is their pop-up satellite location [in] communities such as Parkside, Trainer, and Upland — communities that are also considered perhaps low income communities, where is their pop-up voting site?”
McBlain also said VSCs came up very briefly but somewhat unseriously months ago, he suggested the county survey all municipalities to see which ones might be interested, but that the county never acted on that suggestion.
To anyone thinking McBlain has a hair trigger for an election conspiracy need only listen to his Democrat counterparts to understand that’s not the case.
“I think you served the board with great distinction,” Election Board Chairwoman Ashley Lunkenheimer said upon hearing McBlain’s intention to resign. “I think there’s very few in the county or in the commonwealth who have a better knowledge of election law and I think that your viewpoint has always been well served on this board, but I appreciate that you’re continuing your duties than through the election because we need — you have a really good perspective on elections.”
“John McBlain is someone who I’m gonna disagree with on a great many policy issues, but we both have the same factual understanding of how elections are conducted,” Democratic Councilwoman Christine Reuther told the Inquirer in November, when Reuther was about to renominate him to the election board. “He doesn’t see conspiracy theories every time you turn around.”
Reuther’s November comments to the Inquirer came just as a long-simmering partisan power struggle over the election board was about to come to a close. Earlier in the year, the county council passed an ordinance that would allow it to reject the minority party’s nomination for the election board. The resolution went further, saying that the county had the “unfettered discretion” to reject as many candidates from the minority party as it liked until it found a suitable candidate.
Council Democrats passed the ordinance in January of 2023. Republicans quickly denounced the move as a power grab. When Republicans sued in June, a spokesperson for the council accused Delco Republicans of playing politics.
“Interestingly, the Delco GOP public statements on this case suggests [sic] a ‘blatant power grab,’” the county said in a statement to the Delco Daily Times. “However, the change in law which is being challenged was passed on January 17, 2023. Now, more than five months later, has the lawsuit [sic] been filed. It appears less an effort to secure a fair election, and more a weak effort to develop a talking point for an upcoming county election.”
However, a judge ruled in December the ordinance was illegal and struck it down.
“The Ordinance was an arrogant attempt by County Council to create a veto power for themselves to block the right of the Delaware County Republican Party Chairman to nominate his preferred member to the Delaware County Board of Elections,” said Wally Zimolong, one of the attorneys who fought the suit on behalf of the county GOP.
Reuther, the member of council who oversees the county’s elections, has also danced on the partisan tightrope in a presidential election before.
In 2020, Reuther was clearly the lead on the county’s pursuit of and eventual acceptance of election grants from the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL. Those grants would later be famous for receiving a $350 million infusion from Mark Zuckerberg
As Delaware County got nearer to accepting the grant, the county solicitor flagged to Reuther some of the left-leaning tendencies of the granting agency.
“Not at all surprising,” Reuther said in response. “I am seeking funds to fairly and safely administer the election so everyone legally registered to vote can do so and have their votes count. If a left leaning public charity wants to further my objective, I am good with it. I will deal with the blow back.”
The Pennsylvania General Assembly later banned local election offices from accepting grants from outside, private agencies, in part because of the concerns that the grants resulted in improper and unbalanced political influence.
McBlain was not a part of the election board at that time.
But this time, he says it’s not election security he’s worried about.
“I think this is the Delaware County Democratic Party putting their hand on the scale with these voter services centers to literally get out the vote in highly partisan areas of the county without any consideration of [if] there’s a reason that they didn’t come in and offer it in Marple or Springfield. So I just wasn’t going to be part of it anymore. I’m disgusted with this partisanship showing its head at the 11th hour.”
