The New Yorker:

Lackawanna County was once a Democratic stronghold. In 2024, it is a hotly contested battleground, where the stakes go far beyond politics.

By Clare Malone

On a Wednesday afternoon in late September, the Board of Elections in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, held a public meeting. Sitting on the raised dais of a wood-panelled room, Chris Chermak, a Republican county commissioner—in Lackawanna, the Board of Commissioners also serves as the Board of Elections—read a brief proposal into the record. If approved, the measure would get rid of drop boxes for voting in the county, in order to “increase public confidence in our elections,” Chermak said. His fellow-commissioners, both Democrats, listened with pursed lips.

Bob Bolus, a white-haired man in a bright-blue T-shirt that depicted Jesus Christ next to a bloodied Donald Trump, his fist raised, was the first member of the public to comment. “The ballot boxes aren’t a necessary evil, they are an evil,” Bolus said, his voice rising. “This is about the integrity of the United States of America.” One after another, other residents, many part of a newly formed group, the Lackawanna Election Integrity Task Force, stood and cast doubt on not just the drop boxes but the county’s voting procedures more broadly. One man said that he needed to know the party affiliation of workers who would transport and count ballots; another said that there was only “one reason to have drop boxes—that’s so you can stuff multiple ballots in. That’s it. Let’s call a spade a spade.” All seemed driven by Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that the 2024 election would be, too.

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