East Stroudsburg resident Michael Cohen voiced a concern about potential ballot harvesting in Monroe County to the Monroe County Commissioners last week.

Commissioner John Christy asked Cohen to expand on what he thought what was happening in Monroe County concerning ballot harvesting, and Commissioner Sharon Laverdure asked Cohen to define what he thought harvest balloting was.

“Well, it is when people go door to door and they have blank ballots and speak with the people and urge them to vote,” he said.

Christy was quick to explain there are no blank ballots in Monroe County and said, “In other words you have to apply for an absentee ballot or mail-in ballot. There is no way for anyone to get a bunch of blank ballots.”

“OK, that’s great, but with some people it didn’t happen that way,” Cohen insisted.

Christy reassured Cohen the commissioners have talked a lot about this at election board meetings.

“There is a process that has to be followed for you to be able get that ballot and the envelope that goes with that. Then everything has to be either returned to the elections office via the mail or Dropbox or brought to this facility and put in the box that we have down stairs,” Christy said.

We follow all these procedures to make sure that your ballot was applied for and then it was returned and the ballot was banked in when it was received and then placed in a secure location until such time as we open the ballot, Christy explained.

Cohen still wasn’t totally satisfied about the safety of his ballot, because he claimed he was out of the county for the election two years ago, an submitted and absentee ballot and never received confirmation the ballot was received.

Christy asked if it was possible he had not updated the email address in voter registration system while out of the country. Cohen said maybe he had not updated his email address.