Settlement Reached in Lawsuit Over Luzerne County, Pennsylvania’s 2022 Elections
Luzerne County, Pennsylvania settled a federal lawsuit brought by residents alleging that election administration issues — including paper ballot shortages across at least 50 precincts — disenfranchised voters during the county’s 2022 midterm elections.
As part of the settlement agreement, Luzerne County agreed to adopt written election policies and procedures that outline specific requirements to ensure adequate ballot paper supplies in future elections. Per the settlement, the county will continue to order ballot paper after each election cycle to avert potential shortages and will retain an election law attorney to revise its election administration policies.
The agreement further stipulates that county election personnel will receive annual training on election administration and states that the county will pay the plaintiffs’ counsel $30,000 for litigation expenses. The county did not, however, admit any wrongdoing.
Luzerne County, located in northeastern Pennsylvania, gained notoriety in 2022 after its board of elections deadlocked on a vote to certify the county’s election results — a move that prompted litigation, which ultimately pressured the board to greenlight certification.
The lawsuit at issue in today’s settlement agreement claimed that Luzerne County and its election officials mismanaged the Nov. 8, 2022 midterm elections in a manner that left some voters unable to cast a ballot on Election Day.
The legal action filed last March came amidst Republican-led accusations of deliberate wrongdoing by the county that made it all the way to Congress, where the U.S. House Administration Committee held a hearing last year regarding so-called “voter suppression” in Luzerne’s 2022 midterms.
A duo of Republican attorneys who have previously served as counsel for GOP candidates and groups — including the Republican National Committee — represented the plaintiffs. The lawsuit also received financial backing from a right-wing organization known as the Center for Election Confidence.
In response to the suit, the county defendants disclaimed allegations of malfeasance, explaining that on Election Day in 2022, a state court had allowed the county board of elections to keep polling places open late after receiving more paper ballots. “The ballot paper shortage was a fluke occurrence and not an intentional act,” the defendants averred.
They also pointed to the fact that a post-election investigation conducted by the Luzerne County district attorney’s office revealed that only four election workers reported voting stoppages, and only 16 out of the county’s 143 polling places had paper shortages — significantly fewer than the plaintiffs claimed.
Nevertheless, the plaintiffs maintained that “administration of the 2022 General Election in Luzerne County was a catastrophic failure” and argued that the county violated their constitutional right to vote under the First and 14th Amendments.
According to the suit, “chaos on Election Day” — including ill-equipped polling places, a lack of back-up procedures and poorly trained election workers — “was entirely preventable and predictable.”
The plaintiffs explicitly noted that they did not seek to overturn nor recount the results of the 2022 election — rather, they requested that a federal court require Luzerne County to adopt uniform standards of administration for all future elections in order to avert future disenfranchisement.
However in a separate lawsuit, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys — a Republican named Walter S. Zimolong — served as counsel for a failed GOP congressional candidate and avowed election denier, Jim Bognet, who sued Luzerne County after the 2022 midterms in an attempt to stall certification.
With less than a month before the Nov. 5 general election, there are heightened concerns about the prospect of counties refusing to certify election results — a phenomenon that has recurred in states like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania in recent elections.