Luzerne County has no video surveillance recording of the Wright Manor drop box from the April 23 primary election, largely due to a miscommunication about the duration footage could be preserved, officials said.
The issue recently came to light when county Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams and Vice Chairwoman Alyssa Fusaro sought access to the footage as part of their latest spot-check review.
According to an email county Manager Romilda Crocamo sent to county election board members this week:
The surveillance camera settings at the Wright Manor assisted living facility drop box site in Mountain Top allow recording of up to 45 days of footage. After that, the camera starts overwriting previously recorded footage to capture new video.
However, the staff had been informed by the vendor, Vector Security, that up to 400 days of footage would be recorded to the drive.
“This information was the guide used by staff to schedule a retrieval of footage from that location,” Crocamo said of the 400 days.
When data from Wright Manor was retrieved on Aug. 20, which fell within the 400-day retention date initially provided, the footage from April had been overwritten and was not able to be recovered by the bureau or vendor.
The county had announced the mailing of primary election ballots and availability of drop boxes on April 2, which means footage would have had to be extracted in May to avoid the 45-day overwriting.
Wright Manor staff had been unavailable for an initial retrieval attempt and did not respond to communications about the retrieval when footage was recovered from other county drop box sites, the email said.
Crocamo’s email said the administration is in the process of updating standard operating procedures for the county election bureau and IT department “to ensure a clear plan is in place prior to the upcoming election.”
A county election board majority approved a resolution in September 2022 requiring the county to obtain a copy of drop box footage on a USB-based backup device when the boxes are collected after each election.
Pennsylvania Department of State guidance from September 2023 says counties must ensure drop boxes are monitored by election board-authorized staff, a video security surveillance system or an internal camera that can capture digital images and/or video.
“Staffing should be available, where possible, to ensure that voters have signed and dated their outer envelope, and to point out all educational signage,” it said.
The guidance also said video surveillance should be retained by the county election office for one year following the election certification deadline.
Crocamo told the board last month the county does not have manpower to station sheriff deputies at each drop box. Drop box critics have argued the boxes should be manned to ensure voters have authority if they bring in more than one ballot.
On the opposite side of the polarizing drop box issue, advocates have pointed out mail ballots sometimes arrive too late to return them through regular mail or that some voters have more confidence their ballot will get to the election bureau through a drop box.
It’s unclear if Wright Manor will remain a drop box site for the Nov. 5 general election.
Crocamo has said she has “very serious safety concerns” for the upcoming election, including the securing of drop boxes.
Last week, county Chief Solicitor Harry W. Skene informed both mail ballot drop box hosts not on county government property that they must agree to hold the county harmless for “anything that happens relating to the drop box” for the Nov. 5 general.
Skene’s letters were sent to Wright Manor — which is owned by the county Housing Authority — and Misericordia University in Dallas.
His communication said the county cannot secure boxes on non-county property. For the boxes to be in use for the general election, the entities must sign agreements accepting full responsibility for “providing whatever it takes to secure the drop box and protect the public,” it said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, no final determinations from either entity had been communicated to the county.
The Wright Manor box was added for the 2023 primary election as a replacement site for the Wright Township Volunteer Fire Department, which had notified the county its fire station would no longer host a box.
A county election board majority added the drop box at Misericordia University’s Passan Hall for the 2022 primary to serve Back Mountain voters.
The county’s two other drop boxes have been set up inside the county-owned Broad Street Exchange in Hazleton and Penn Place Building in Wilkes-Barre.
Crocamo’s email about the lost Wright Manor drop box footage also noted security camera equipment logged several power outages that could be attributed to weather or a faulty power strip at that location.
“Going forward, we will need to check the power sources and add a backup battery to the locations to avoid an equipment failure that may affect the longevity of the device or data corruption,” she wrote.
The election board had agreed last year to perform spot-checking of video footage at the urging of prior board member Jim Mangan. Mangan said the board had agreed to require surveillance of all drop boxes and had an obligation to look at some of the resulting footage.
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