Berks County elections officials turn possible voter fraud case over to district attorney

The case of a person who was registered to vote twice and cast two ballots in the 2020 presidential election will be turned over to the Berks County district attorney’s office, according to election officials.

The situation first came to light when Elections Director Ronald Rutkowski told the elections board at a meeting two weeks ago about a processing error that assigned a second voter registration ID to one voter.

Rutkowski said his office would look further into the issue and report back.

On Thursday Rutkowski provided the election board with an update, telling members that he was unable to reach the voter to find out if the double voting was intentional or done by mistake.

As a result, he recommended that the case be turned over to the district attorney’s office for further investigation.

The board agreed and voted unanimously to forward the case to the district attorney’s office.

When Rutkowski brought the issue to the board two weeks ago, he said it was an unfortunate incident.

He said a registration application from the individual was processed in 2004 and a second was processed in 2020 that was spurred by an agency reaching out to assist people to register to vote.

“The second application was not a complete replica of the first,” he said.

Rutkowski said the office would have flagged the second registration if the name, date of birth, last four digits of the Social Security number and driver’s license number matched the first. But that was not the case.

So the person ended up with two different registrations that allowed the voter to cast two ballots.

The first was cast with a mailed ballot using one registration number, and another was cast at the polls on Election Day using the second number.

Rutkowski said Thursday that the elections office discovered the double registration recently when the person attempted to change his registration information.

Rutkowski declined to identify the voter, the party affiliation of the voter or the gender of the voter citing a potential investigation by law enforcement.

Also Thursday:

• The board voted to approve the location and hours of operation for two ballot drop boxes.

The first box will be located in the lobby of the Berks County Services Center, and the second will be at the Berks County Agricultural Center in Bern Township.

The drop boxes will be open starting Oct. 18 during the following days and hours:

• Monday through Friday: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Saturday, Oct. 30: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
• Monday, Nov. 1: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• Election Day, Nov. 2: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Officials said both drop boxes are secured by deputies from the sheriff’s department. Workers in the election services department collect the ballots at the end of each day and seal them when the centers are closed to ensure the ballots remain secure.

Voters who choose to drop off their ballots are not allowed to drop off ballots belonging to anyone else — a practice Democrats call community collection and Republicans deem ballot harvesting. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that the practice is illegal.

• The board approved 16 temporary polling location changes for the upcoming November election due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The current list of polling locations is available here.

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