David Voye doesn’t sleep much these days. The manager of Allegheny County’s Elections Division says, “You fall asleep very quickly, but then you wake up every half hour thinking about things you need to do.” It has been that way since right after Labor Day.
Elections departments work year-round, and, even when we are not in the middle of an election, there is plenty to do to wrap up the last one and get ready for the next one. But the two months leading up to our twice-yearly elections — a primary and a general — are intense.
Federal law lays out some basic requirements for fair elections and the right to vote, but the rest is left to the states. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court strenuously protects the rights of the commonwealth’s voters by relying upon the state Constitution, which says, “Elections shall be free and equal; and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage.”
But the states leave most of the management decisions to their individual counties. In Pennsylvania, each of the 67 counties runs its own election. That is why the types of voting machines and the treatment of flawed mail-in ballots and remote voting options differ from one county to the next.
Like most solid managers, Voye started at the bottom rung in the department 37 years ago and was named to the top job in 2019. Since then, he has been in charge of planning and executing our elections. The closest thing to what he does twice a year is executing the logistics of a complex military operation with multiple moving parts and an inflexible timeline.
There are 1,327 precincts in Allegheny County at 850 different locations to serve the county’s 943,000 registered voters. Each precinct has at least five officers — a judge of elections and four others — who conduct the election. In all, there are nearly 7,000 Election Day precinct officials who are responsible for processing voters across the county.
“These folks are the backbone of our election,” Voye says. “Their average age is 65, and they work at least a 16-hour day for a small stipend because it’s their civic duty. We couldn’t hold on without them.”
Voye also has nearly 200 field workers who respond to polling place problems throughout Election Day. Another couple of hundred workers start at 6:30 a.m. at the “Warehouse,” where all of the votes are gathered and counted into the night.
Mail-in ballots, which some counties continue to struggle with, will be counted and reported out within minutes after the polls close. Voye says the county has acquired the latest technology and provides additional temporary staff to make that happen.
“We set the bar and standards for the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and I want us to stay that way,” said Sam DeMarco, the at-large Republican county councilman and the county’s Republican chair. Democrats are the majority in Allegheny County, so his supportive comments are notable these days.
Successfully pulling off something this big just once in a lifetime would give anyone bragging rights. But as soon as the dust settles, Voye and his team will be back at it, managing another election without a major hitch.
It is that way across America. Our greatest civic endeavor — the election of our local town councils and school boards and even the president of the United States — depends on our friends and neighbors. Good Americans do this for the good of all Americans.