A referendum effort to get a question about election integrity on the November ballot may have failed, but the coalition behind it still plans to lobby the Allegheny County Council to pass legislation. A coalition of groups including Don’t Tread on My Vote and VoteAllegheny plan to rally at the City-County building at 4 p.m. today and attend the 5 p.m. meeting of county council. As the activists previously explained to the Post-Gazette, their main aim is to get the county to create a commission to review voting machines and eventually have them replaced with ones that leave a paper trail. … With the referendum effort done, the coalition now plans to focus on lobbying county council to pass a 16-page ordinance it drafted or similar legislation.
“County Council and the Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald should pass this ordinance or others which have been proposed, because such action goes a long way to protecting the integrity of our vote,” the coalition said in a press release. “They should pass it because large numbers of people want it, and exceedingly few oppose it.”
The coalition tried to force county council to consider its ordinance by collecting the 500 signatures needed to get an item on a meeting agenda.
But according to Ron Bandes of VoteAllegheny, the county “rejected the ordinance we wanted to discuss, saying it’s legally insufficient.” He added that “there’s an appeal in process.”
Full Article: An Allegheny County election integrity coalition won’t get a ballot question but is still pushing for new laws.