Feb 28, 2019 3 min read

As counties across Pennsylvania rush to purchase new voting machines before the state’s self-imposed 2020 deadline, the process is getting murky with accusations of “pay-to-play” deals.

After it was revealed in December that Luzerne County’s elections director had accepted a trip to Las Vegas from a vendor that was selected to provide the county with its voting equipment, state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said he would review the interactions that county officials from all 67 counties had with vendors.

Over the next few weeks, DePasquale’s office sent letters to county officials asking five questions about what perks, if any, they had received from the several vendors. That included any gifts, trips or seminars.

Last week, DePasquale revealed that 18 counties had received some perk from the vendors as elections officials were trying to determine what type of voting machine they should select. That headline would give anyone pause and stir outrage that county officials were enjoying “pay-to-play” luxuries at the behest of private companies.

Some of the perks were egregious.

Officials from Cameron County responded that they enjoyed high-end dinners at local restaurants, private tours of a winery and distillery and tickets to a museum. Some Warren County elections officials received tickets to an amusement park, and even had their own candy bar created for them.

Westmoreland County Director of Elections Beth Lechman said one vendor paid for tickets for her and her husband to attend the Lake Erie Wine Festival last September, along with dinner for the couple.

Those issues raise serious questions about whether the people making million-dollar decisions about voting equipment are being swayed by the perks they provide. Those situations deserve serious investigation about whether ethics rules were violated.

But, for the most part, DePasquale’s report fell flat, quite frankly.

Many of the counties reported that one of the vendors brought coffee and doughnuts for morning presentations on the new voting equipment. Greene and Fayette counties reported no gifts, while Washington County officials said they received a few lunches during demonstrations. Bucks County reported they received meals, a promotional folding chair and ride fare for the incline in Pittsburgh.

“It doesn’t matter if the gifts were large or small – my problem is the fact that anyone accepted them, period,” DePasquale said in a press release.

Most reasonable people would consider amusement park tickets, winery tours and junkets to Vegas a clear violation of ethics rules. But if a cheap chair or a frosted doughnut sways an elected officials on what kind of voting machine a county should purchase, then we have bigger issues on our hands.

It seemed as though DePasquale was punishing the counties that were transparent in their responses. His press release and subsequent media conference seemed to shame those 18 counties and their workers without getting to the root of the problem. Moreover, how many other counties simply withheld information on the perks they received or didn’t consider coffee and doughnuts to be a gift?

The reasons behind DePasquale’s review were important, but now it needs to go deeper. Fancy dinners and paid vacations have no business mixing with government decisions. DePasquale should spend dig deeper into those questions rather than focusing on who had brunch.