Judge Toothman rejoins elections board
WAYNESBURG – Greene County President Judge Farley Toothman reappointed himself to the county’s Board of Elections after one of the current members resigned to run as a state delegate in the upcoming primary.
County Commissioner David Coder resigned from the elections board Jan. 27 since he will be on the April 26 primary ballot hoping to be picked as one of the delegates to represent the 18th Congressional District at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Coder was among eight Democrats in the congressional district to file nominating petitions, including former Steelers running back Franco Harris of Allegheny County, to be a delegate at the convention. The filing deadline was Tuesday afternoon.
The elections board typically contains all three county commissioners – except when they’re running for office – meaning the president judge has the obligation to appoint another member to fill the vacancy.
Toothman filed an order Feb. 9 appointing himself to the vacancy for the remainder of the election year. He will join county commissioners Blair Zimmerman and Archie Trader on the three-person board.
“I needed to do something (about the vacancy) and I liked being on the board,” Toothman said this week. “I thought I could add some consistency to some of the things that happened last year.”
Those issues included calibration problems with a few electronic voting machines during the primary election that prompted the county to ask vendor Electronic Software & Systems to provide technical support during the general election last November.
The commissioners voted in September to provide up to $12,000 in funding for the technical support, but the elections board members were upset commissioners did not first ask for their feedback. That prompted the abrupt resignations Sept. 18 of Toothman and fellow members Michael Dulaney and Lawrence Stratton.
Toothman reappointed himself and Dulaney three days later, along with former county elections director Frances D. Pratt. Those three members continued in their roles for the remainder of 2015 until the county commissioners, all of whom ran for election last year, took their seats on the board at the beginning of this year.
The elections board is scheduled to meet next April 7, less than three weeks before the primary, in the county office building’s meeting room.