Pennsylvanians will be going to the polls to elect statewide judges, county commissioners and other local officials on November 7th.  Historically, this is not an election that has garnered a lot of attention from the state’s voters, although you would never know that based on the amount of money and TV commercials in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court race.

However, every election is under a  microscope since the 2020 presidential election that former president Donald Trump claimed, without evidence, was full of fraud.

Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State Al Schmidt was on The Spark Monday, where he said the local offices that will be decided next week are important and probably have a bigger impact on voters' lives than the national offices. But he also said he's aware of a growing trend of national issues being highlighted in local campaigns, "There's been a sort of I don't know what the right terminology is, nationalization of even local races and whether one supports one candidate for president or another has kind of like seeped into that whole dialog. But, regardless of party, regardless of anything like that, it's important that voters obviously review the candidates, see where they stand on issues and vote accordingly and make their voice heard."

Former President Trump questioned whether mail in ballots were secure. Schmidt said it's been proven in Pennsylvania and other states that there hasn't been widespread fraud with mail in voting.

Schmidt indicated that there has been a high turnover of poll workers and in county's election offices and that sometimes can lead to mistakes, especially with the mail in ballots,"With all that turnover, it makes it more likely that you'll find mistakes being made by election administrators who are less experienced, who haven't been through this process again and again and again. And the real danger to that is that you have mistakes that are made, even if they don't influence the outcome of the election in an environment where everything is perceived as being intentional and deliberate and seeking to influence the outcome of the election one way or another, as opposed to it just being an election administrator who has been in that role for two weeks leading up to to Election Day. So we have to do what we can at Department of State to be real partners with the counties, to be of assistance to them, to provide guidance to them, to help them along the way. And when mistakes occur, to do what we can to to correct those mistakes, to make sure that voters can still cast their vote and have it counted."

Schmidt admitted that Pennsylvania's election code that was written 1937 is in need of an update and pre-canvassing of mail in ballots before election day should be at the top of the list,"Plenty of red states do it. Plenty of blue states do it. States like Florida allow mail in ballot pre-canvasing so that the boards of elections can in a methodical timely way review the declaration envelope to make sure the voters signed it, to make sure they've dated it and to do it not in any kind of rushed way. Right now that whole process can only begin at 7 a.m. an election morning, and it's the main reason why there's a delay reporting results for mail in ballot voting."

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