Nov 16, 2023 By Mike Jones 4 min read

The revolving door at the Greene County Elections Office is continuing to swing.

Elections Director Eric Finch, who started in his new position on Oct. 23, will be leaving the office Friday after just four weeks on the job.

County officials posted the job opening online Tuesday as they begin searching for their sixth different elections director since August 2020.

Finch was working at the elections office Wednesday putting the finishing touches on the Nov. 7 election when a reporter visited, and while he spoke about his brief tenure, he did not give an exact reason why he decided to leave the position less than a month after starting.

“It’s not good to fill a position during an election,” Finch said of the timing of his hiring. “I think the next person will have a good footing underneath them when they start (before) the May primary.”

Finch was immediately met with problems when he started in the position after multiple mail-in ballot errors were discovered, causing a logistical nightmare for voters and the elections office. The ballot mistakes were not of Finch’s doing since he began after they were compiled by the previous elections director, Jason Mihal, and approved by the elections board. Mihal, who started in January, left the position in mid-October after the second ballot error was discovered despite previous assurances to county officials that he planned to remain at the office until after the election.

That left it up to Finch to organize the efforts to notify the more than 1,800 people who requested mail-in ballots about the error in which voters were erroneously told to vote for three commissioner candidates rather than two.

“It was fine,” Finch said of working to fix the problems associated with the Nov. 7 election. “Things went smooth.”

Commission Chairman Mike Belding praised Finch for his work during his brief tenure and said the commissioners hope to hire a replacement within the next two weeks.

“You can’t blame Eric,” Belding said. “He walked into a firestorm on Day 1 and tried to pick up the pieces.”

Despite attempts to inform the voters of the ballot problems, 548 out of the nearly 1,500 mail-in ballots cast had “overvotes” with people selecting three candidates in the commissioners race. Those votes were not counted in that race, although it did not appear to affect the election since the last place candidate, Christine “Chris” Bailey, was far behind the top vote-getters of Jared Edgreen, Betsy Rohanna McClure and Blair Zimmerman.

Other races were not affected by that mistake, although that hasn’t stopped at least one candidate in a municipal election from challenging the results.

Donna Russo-Zwerver, a Republican who lost the Waynesburg mayoral race to Democrat Lynn Bussey by a margin of 321 to 227, filed a lawsuit Monday in Greene County Court of Common Pleas demanding a special election for all races.

In the lawsuit, Russo-Zwerver claimed the multiple errors with the mail-in ballots along with other irregularities caused the results of the election to be tainted across the board.

“Defendants fraudulently manipulated the entire 2023 Greene County elections from beginning to end,” the lawsuit states. “The actions of the defendants were either highly reckless, negligent, or intentional and malicious.”

Russo-Zwerver does not explain how her mayoral race may have been affected by the mail-in ballot problems, nor does she specifically ask for a recount in the lawsuit. There doesn’t appear to be a mechanism in the state’s election code to hold a countywide special election for all offices.

No attorney is listed for Russo-Zwerver, who is the mother of outgoing District Attorney David Russo. She names Belding, the county commissioners, elections board and President Judge Lou Dayich as defendants. Belding declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the elections board is scheduled to meet at 11 a.m. today to certify the election.