York County to hire new election director, commissioner not worried about general election

County has experienced deputy director and other support staff who ran the primary

• Jordan Wilkie/WITF
  BioRecent Stories

  

  As the democracy reporter for WITF, I will cover any kind of story that has to do with how we govern ourselves. That will include doing a lot of election coverage about how to access the ballot, how public officials administer elections, the technology used to run and secure elections, and the laws that govern it all.
  
  My work will also include accountability coverage for elected officials that use their positions to then undermine democratic institutions, like the legislators that voted against the certification of the presidential election results on January 6, 2021. If that weren’t enough, I foresee covering some local government decisions, fights over public records and transparency, and some candidate coverage in 2024. Many stories can have a “democracy frame” meant to help us all understand how our governments work and how we can shape them.
  
  I’m most looking forward to the community reporting about which WITF is passionate. I’ll be talking to a lot of folks about what they want out of their governments, local to national, and how they want to make their visions reality. I’m excited to meet you and talk, with or without a microphone on hand.
  
  I also like to turn my work phone off. When I do that, I’m looking for rocks to climb, trails to run on (slower and slower, somehow), and new places to visit. I’ve lived in the (extended) South for most of my life, so y’all will hear me say things funny and sometimes my hearing is funny, too, so we’ll figure out this radio thing together.

 Matt Slocum / AP Photo

Ballot envelopes for the Pennsylvania primary election are seen after being processed at the Chester County Voter Services office, Thursday, May 19, 2022, in West Chester, Pa.

Correction: Bryan Sheaffer’s first name was misspelled in the original version of this story. 

York County will hire a new elections director after the primary results are finalized on Monday, according to county Board of Commissioners President Julie Wheeler.

Deputy Elections Director Bryan Sheaffer is serving as acting director until someone is hired. The county’s outgoing director, Julie Haertsch, made the decision to step away from the position for medical reasons. She’s been on leave for months, so current staff ran the primary and gained valuable experience in handling a major election.

“I think that we’ve demonstrated to the public that we are running efficient and effective elections,” Wheeler said, adding the transition to a new director should be smooth.

The county reorganized the elections department to make operations more efficient, Wheeler said. It also expanded the staff since the last presidential election in 2020.

The new elections director will lead eight full-time and three part-time staff. In addition to Sheaffer, the county has a process implementation coordinator that helps with training poll workers and tracking inventory, two information technology staff, and seven clerks, one of whom is bilingual and can answer questions from Spanish-speaking voters.

“The great thing is we have a seasoned election staff, and one of the things I admire about our election staff is everyone pulls together to help everyone out,” Wheeler said, adding that she has no concerns about bringing in a new election director in a presidential election year.

York County has had high turnover in the position since 2019. Haertsch served since February 2022. Prior to that, Steve Ulrich held the post from January 2020 to January 2022, taking over from Nikki Suchanic.

York has also dealt with several election administration errors. In 2019, the county faced a number of technical issues with its new voting equipment. Two years later, the county board of elections, made up by the commissioners, did not order enough ballots. The decision caused some precincts to run out and required the county to print and deliver ballots throughout the day.

In 2023, the county sent out 400 duplicate mail ballots, a clerical error that may have confused voters who received them. But, no one would have been allowed to vote more than once or introduce any other concerns. Last month, two weeks before the primary, the county sent 166 voters mail-in ballots with the wrong congressional district.

The new director will be the face of the elections operations in the county.

Ulrich, who dealt with opposition from the county Republican Party for the duration of his tenure due to political tweets he had previously made in opposition to then-president Donald Trump, says the support of commissioners is essential to being able to do the job well.

“Any new election director needs to be coming in with eyes wide open and expect challenges to be heightened,” Ulrich said, referring to starting the job in a major election year. Common wisdom from election officials is that it takes four years to completely understand how the system is run, he said.

While Ulrich said the nonpartisan role of election director had to navigate politics more than he expected, he never had a sense that the county commissioners used politics to attempt to influence the election.

Both Ulrich and Wheeler said in addition to election staff, poll workers are essential to running the election well. The county has 161 polling locations that need to be staffed on Election Day.

Sometimes, your mornings are just too busy to catch the news beyond a headline or two. Don’t worry. The Morning Agenda has got your back. Each weekday morning, host Tim Lambert will keep you informed, amused, enlightened and up-to-date on what’s happening in central Pennsylvania and the rest of this great commonwealth.

Learn More