ELECTION INTEGRITYHow One Swing-State County Has Escaped Election Conspiracies
Mercer County, Pennsylvania has avoided the rancor and abuse that have plagued other parts of Pennsylvania. Local Democratic and Republican leaders both vouch for the integrity of the county’s voting system.
Election officials and poll workers across Pennsylvania are braced for a potential flood of misinformation and abuse on Nov. 5, Election Day. But in a drab municipal meeting room north of Pittsburgh, Mercer County Election Director Thad Hall preached a radically different vision.
“I think it’s going to be a really fun election,” Hall told a group of roughly 20 poll workers at a training session in late September.
“You’re going to have a great day,” he told another group that afternoon. “Decide what you’re going to eat in advance. That’s the big question.”
It might sound like an odd note to strike in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state riven by voter fraud conspiracies, protests and lawsuits after the 2020 election. But Mercer — a rural county of about 108,000 that former President Donald Trump won by more than 15,000 votes four years ago — represents a rare island of bipartisan detente, if not all-out agreement.
Local Democratic and Republican leaders both vouch for Hall’s department and the integrity of the county’s voting system. Poll workers shrugged off concerns about the upcoming election. And in training sessions for poll workers and conversations with a reporter, Hall — a 56-year-old Ph.D. wearing khakis and slip-on Skechers — extolled the hectic joys of Election Day with all the corny, rah-rah enthusiasm of a high school gym teacher.
Pennsylvania may rank among the most contested states in the bitterest national election in recent U.S. history. But Mercer County — through some combination of its history, culture and grassroots efforts to bolster voter trust — has thus far escaped most of the rancor, suspicion and misinformation that have come to plague election officials in other parts of the state.
“The issues in Mercer County have been really minimal,” said Jeff Greenburg, a senior adviser for election administration at the nonpartisan good-government group Committee of Seventy, who was Hall’s immediate predecessor in the election bureau. “And that’s at a time when we have major trust issues with many voters.”
Hall is hesitant to call Mercer County a model for other jurisdictions, since at least some of its success relates to the unique history and demographics of the place itself — a Republican county with a recent history of significant labor and Democratic politics, making it fairly centrist.
