33-Year Clarion County Veteran Director of Elections Callihan Ready for Primary May 15

Ron Wilshire

Ron Wilshire

Published May 6, 2018 4:40 am
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CLARION, Pa. (EYT) — It comes but twice a year, but Clarion County spends all year getting ready for it.  Elections.

“We’re prepared, and all of the voting machines have been tested and ready to go for the Tuesday, May 15 primary elections,” said Clarion County Director of Elections Cindy Callihan.

Callihan is nearly an institution in Clarion County for 33 years, first serving as director of elections for 26 years before taking a break and returning to the position seven years ago.

Interviewed last Friday in the basement of the Clarion County Main Street Administrative Building, Callihan, and three others were busy stuffing zip lock storage bag with supplies for the poll workers at Clarion County’s 41 precincts.

“The bags include a calculator, pens, pencils, tape, scissors, and stuff like that,” Callihan said. “We’re working all day on bags, but we prepare all year for this.”

While it is just as intense for the general election, a primary election does require additional attention because it is a primary, and two political parties are included and require separate ballots. Instead of doing one ballot for the general election, primary requires two versions of an emergency ballot, a sample ballot, and provisional ballot.

“Every election seems to be a little different; there’s always something special,” Callihan continued.  “When I started, we had all paper ballots, and that’s when we up till the next day into the wee hours of the morning and into the afternoon helping to tally the tick marks on the return sheets. That took a lot of people in that process. It’s easier now, but it’s still a lot of work. There’s a lot of behind the scenes work that comes with the elections that people don’t realize what we do until you have you’re involved with your first election.”

The May 15 primary has an extra requirement for seven or eight precincts in the Redbank Valley School District. Redbank has a special question on the ballot this year regarding funding and a millage increase that must be included in their ballots. According to Callihan, non-affiliated voters can vote only on those questions.  Redbank Valley also includes precincts in Armstrong and Clarion Counties.

The voting machines used by Clarion County are not hackable because they do not connect with anything except an electrical outlet.

“They have a memory card in them, and it’s all sealed with numbers on the seals.  If those seals are missing, we know that means they have been tampered with, and, in that case, we don’t use that machine at all. They send a brand new machine out and program it.”

In addition to the voting machines, equipment is included to program each voter card at the voting sites that the voters take to the machine, and that equipment is programmed and ready to go.

“The judge of elections will have a key for the machines after they leave here, and she’s responsible for the key for all of that equipment.  He or she guards that with their life.”

A grant is also allowing setup display boards at each precinct that include all required notices.  The system allows the County to control what is posted and include all required information such as rules and regulations.

About 110 voting machines are going out for this election, but the future of these machines is limited because the Commonwealth mandated that new machines provide a paper trail.

“I think there are five different vendors that we’ll have to pick and choose, whatever works for Clarion County,” explained Callihan.

“With no money, how can you decide? All they want is the audit trail. For instance, if we need to do a recount, then we can always go back to the paper ballots and take that stack of paper ballots and see.  On some of the machines, there’s a paper ballot that is recorded inside the machine with a list of voters, and you don’t take it out. If there’s a recount and there is a challenge, you can go back to that machine and take out the paper trail and you can see exactly how the ballots were voted.”

“There’s a bunch of different options. We’ve seen them at conferences, and we look seriously at them, even though we don’t have the money, but we know they’re coming down the pike where our machines now are going to fall apart.”

“It’s just the amount of funding that has been given doesn’t give Clarion County a lot of money. They allocated $14 million, but that’s to be divided for everyone and 67 counties.  Philadelphia would eat that up in a minute—there would be nothing left for us.”

The decision on funding will be made by someone else, but Callihan, just as she has done for 33 years, will be ready for changes.

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