‘We may help more Rs than Ds’: Texts show Delco Dems’ strategic concerns during 2024 voting

On October 19, 2024, the presidential election was still two and a half weeks away. Voting by mail or absentee ballot had begun across the commonwealth. Conflicting polls signaled a nailbiter.

In Delaware County, where deep Democratic turnout had helped boost Biden in 2020, the elections board was preparing to open up three “voter service centers” in addition to one at the county seat in Media, where a voter could request and receive a mail-in ballot, or get help with a ballot that needed to be replaced. Drop boxes were conveniently located less than 100 feet away from two of the four locations.

Late that afternoon, Colleen Guiney, chair of the county Democratic party texted County Councilwoman Christine Reuther, also a Democrat, and said, “Do you think there’s any point in trying to have volunteers outside the media voter service center to help when the lines get long? I don’t know if it’s a bad idea interfere [sic] with voting or if it might be helpful.”

“We may wind up helping more Rs than Ds,” Reuther texted back, exposing a sharp partisan lens. “I am not sure there is much to help with.”

The text is one of a handful of messages from county officials obtained by Broad + Liberty showing select members of an all-Democratic council feeling at ease mingling their official jobs with their more partisan selves, blurring the ethical lines of a duty to administer the election in a nonpartisan way.

Four days later on Oct. 23, Guiney again texted Reuther, this time about a potential drop box in Chester Township, a municipality so Democratic it would eventually vote for Harris over Trump by an 89-11 split.

“Has Jim made any progress with a Chester Drop box?” Guiney asked, apparently making a reference to Delaware County Elections Director Jim Allen. 

“Not as [of] yesterday. I can’t be the only squeaky wheel without opening the [door] to ‘partisan [pressure] claims. I spoke to [election board members] Scott Alberts and will try to reach Ashley [Lunkenheimer]. Can you get other people to write emails to him and the election board that they are getting confusion from voters?”

Reuther, like Guiney, appears eager to get the Chester drop box open. But the exchange seems to imply if Reuther were to bring this up to Allen, he might rebuff her. Reuther then appears to work with Guiney to launder her complaints through others so the complaints will look organic and public, rather than having originated from an incumbent elected official.

When Broad + Liberty reached out for comment and said the text was problematic, the county took issue with that characterization, but did not offer any different version of facts.

“It’s unclear what is supposedly problematic about a member of Council providing suggestions as to how residents can provide feedback,” Michael Connolly, Delaware County’s communication director, replied. “A resident reached out to Councilwoman Reuther, who looked into the issue raised and exhausted what could be done at the time to address the concern.”

Connolly did not respond to questions about the previous Reuther text regarding help that might “wind up helping more Rs than Ds.” Guiney also did not respond to a request for comment.

In yet another text, Reuther told Guiney, “If the General assembly does not fix the election code, I may urge the election board to stop doing over the counter voting. It is not good for the staff and the SURE system is not set up to handle it.”

The complaints naturally suggest the question of how long councilwoman Reuther has felt these concerns, given that she has been one of the biggest advocates for expanding various methods of voting. She was one of the leaders, if not the top leader, in 2020 for the county’s acceptance and use of the controversial grants doled out by the Chicago nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL. 

The chairman of the Delaware County GOP blasted the revelations.

“One party controlling all facets of government is not what was ever intended by our forefathers. This is precisely what we have in Delaware County, and my sense is very few people, regardless of party, see this as in the best interest of our citizenry,” Delco GOP Chairman Frank Agovino told Broad + Liberty after reviewing the texts and documents.

“Recent comments from one of our elected Council members is just another example of absolute power corrupting absolutely. Comments made about discerning which services would benefit ‘Rs’ more than ‘Ds’ when it came to the establishment of Voter Servicing Centers is just another reason people distrust the management and integrity of elections in Delaware County.”

Agovino’s comments come in a year in which Republicans are ambitious about putting a dent in the council’s 5-0 Democratic tilt, especially after the council raised taxes 23 percent last year.

Emails obtained by Broad + Liberty also showed Council President Monica Taylor using her government email account to help organize and promote a “Souls to the Polls” get-out-the-vote drive.

Souls to the Polls is explicitly nonpartisan. For example, the website for the Philadelphia-area branch says the group is a “non-partisan, neighbor-to-neighbor project,” and that “[w]e serve voters regardless of their affiliation.”

Yet because Souls to the Polls has been affiliated with black churches for so long, and because the black population has been such a reliable Democrat voting block for well over half a century, it sometimes appears Democratic-aligned. Consider that the North Carolina Democratic Party directly boosted Souls to the Polls on its website in 2022.

Vice President Harris frequently coordinated her campaign with Souls to the Polls as well.

“Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is launching its ‘Souls to the Polls’ effort this weekend to turn out Black churchgoers in battleground states as Election Day approaches,” an ABC news report on Oct. 11 said.  

One of the religious leaders emailing with Councilwoman Taylor said, “Our mandate is clear: to do all we can to ensure an optimal outcome of the Presidential election” — rhetoric that seems far from neutral.

Yet the county not only said Taylor’s actions using her government-sponsored email were OK, they were laudable.

“More people lawfully participating in free and fair elections is a good thing. Who someone chooses to vote for is their business, but the county does dispute any attempt to characterize assisting voters as something nefarious,” Connolly said.

Still another email shows the county was actively shopping for employees to staff the “voter service centers” (VSCs), but that the county was doing that weeks before the election board would finally approve them. 

That revelation is important because it adds another data point to a controversy that erupted close to the election’s conclusion when the only Republican on the election board, John McBlain, announced his resignation in protest of the creation of the VSCs.

When the VSCs were voted on officially on Oct. 11, McBlain said he witnessed a coordinated plan.

“So, at the time of the [Oct. 11] meeting, it was clear that there was a partisan [effort] to pack the room in favor of this. There were dozens of Democratic committee people or volunteers,” McBlain said days after that meeting. “There were a dozen or more members of the League of Women voters who were nothing more than the provisional wing of the Delaware County Democratic Party who were present to speak in favor of it.”

According to the email obtained by Broad + Liberty, on Sept. 12, 2024, a staffing coordinator for a temporary employment agency emailed an elections administrator. “I will be working on the positions for the satellite offices, please let me know when you have a firm decision on those,” the staffing coordinator said.

The county is correct in asserting that it had brought up the issue of VSCs prior to September. It is also correct to say that the discussion of those VSCs was glancing.

“We’re exploring the possibility — I want to emphasize the word ‘exploring’ — voter service centers,” Elections Director Allen said in June.

“Voter service centers: Currently we don’t have anything nailed down. We are examining options in the western part of the county. We’ll be approaching Chester Heights for the western part of the county as well as Upper Darby,” Allen subsequently said in August. “Additionally we have to be satisfied that we’re going to be able to staff that properly with persons who are very familiar with the inner workings of the SURE system,” Allen added.

In September, VSCs came up again, but for less than two minutes of the entire meeting, which focused almost exclusively on the one VSC at the county seat in Media.

The county did not directly answer a question about whether the VSCs were a fait accompli.

Another issue raised by one of the Souls to the Polls emails discussed earlier is that the email used language about the VSCs that had become forbidden for various legal and technical reasons.

“We would plan to arrive at the Churches around 8:30 for breakfast and pickup would begin at 9:30 to head to the polls,” the email said, (emphasis added).

In public comments by Democrats on VSCs or satellite election offices, officials have taken care not to call them polling places, because that verbiage came with real-world consequences.

In the 2020 election, Philadelphia set up numerous satellite election offices around the city, but when the Trump campaign asked for poll watchers to have access to the spaces, they were denied. 

At the core of the argument was the notion that the “satellite election offices” were clones, so to speak, of each county’s home-based election office in the county seat. Only by saying the offices were providing the “ministerial duties” of the county, it was impossible for them to be actual polling places.

The Trump campaign filed suit and the issue went all the way to Commonwealth Court where a three-judge panel upheld that reasoning in a 2-1 vote.

“The Trial Court reasoned that the Election Code provides that polling places operate only on Election Day and are available only to voters residing in specific districts, whereas satellite offices are restricted by neither date nor location,” the majority ruling held. “The Trial Court further explained that the Election Code specifically provides that mail-in ballots cannot be delivered to polling places, but must be sent to the Board’s offices or placed in drop boxes.”

The lone dissenting judge, Patricia McCullough, blasted that thinking in her dissent, saying “the act of voting undoubtedly occurs when an elector completes and delivers a mail-in ballot in person ‘to said county board of election.’”

The email calling VSCs “the polls” is similar to another instance discovered by Broad + Liberty in which the behind-the-scenes language differed from the public-facing discussion. In a 2020 document authored by two nonprofits, the Philadelphia-based Committee of 70, and the nationally focused organization Vote at Home Institute, the groups said satellite election centers would provide for “de facto early voting.”

If those same groups or if county governments had called satellite election offices “early voting centers” or “polling places” it’s very likely the legal challenge from the Trump team to place poll watchers at the sites might have been successful. The entire legal argument from the counties was centered on the idea that a satellite election office is critically different and distinct from a polling place.

As for the partisan lens Reuther displayed in her text that worried more Republican voters might be helped, she, too, has been caught in controversial moments before.

In preparation for the 2020 election, with the coronavirus pandemic still in first-year bloom, the Chicago-based nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life offered election grants to election offices around the country. Although the grants would eventually become an open call to any county government in the nation, it began as an invitation-only outreach, and Delaware County was among the lucky counties to be chosen.

Broad + Liberty obtained county emails about the grants. In one of those, an attorney raised the issue with Reuther that the CTCL might have a left-leaning bias.

“Not at all surprising,” Reuther said in response. “I am seeking funds to fairly and safely administer the election so everyone legally registered to vote can do so and have their votes count. If a left leaning public charity wants to further my objective, I am good with it. I will deal with the blow back.”

Despite those concerns, when the county announced its cooperation with the CTCL, it described the organization as “nonpartisan.”

Todd Shepherd is Broad + Liberty’s chief investigative reporter. Send him tips at tshepherd@broadandliberty.com, or use his encrypted email at shepherdreports@protonmail.com. @shepherdreports