Officials concerned by voter’s 2 registrations

Person tried to vote twice in same election

The Berks County elections office is investigating how a voter ended up being registered and voting twice.

Elections Director Ronald Rutkowski told the elections board at a meeting Thursday about a processing error that assigned a second voter registration ID to one voter.

The individual was only identified by a last name and first initial. Rutkowski did not say with which party the voter was registered or identify the voter’s gender.

Rutkowski said a registration application from this individual was processed in 2004 and a second was processed in 2020 that was spurred by an agency reaching out to assist people to register to vote.

He said this person tried to vote twice in the same election but did not specify which one.

The first was cast using a mailed ballot using one registration number, and another was cast at the polls on Election Day using a second number. It was unclear how the elections office discovered the double registration.

Rutkowski recommended his office merge the two registrations and send a letter informing the voter that they were erroneously registered twice. He suggested no further action be taken on the matter but said his office would be looking into how the error was made.

Rutkowski said that, at this point, he had not reached out to the voter for an explanation but said he believed the voter may have not realized they were already registered.

Commissioner Christian Leinbach said he believes Rutkowski should contact the voter to see what the motivation was behind casting two ballots.

“It’s a little concerning to me that a voter would knowingly vote twice in the same election,” he said. “That doesn’t make sense to me. He had to be pretty good to be able to recognize that he was voting under two different voter IDs.”

Rutkowski said that’s where the issue gets complicated.

“The second application was not a complete replica of the first,” he said.

He said the office should have flagged the second registration as long as the name, date of birth, last four digits of the Social Security number and driver’s license number matched the first.

“If that information was not the same, then that check was not had,” he said.

Leinbach said he wants Rutkowski to continue to investigate the issue.

“I’d like a more detailed explanation of what happened,” he said. “I believe very much in not assuming guilt, but I want to understand what happened, and if it still doesn’t look right then I would consider turning it over to the district attorney to investigate.”

Rutkowski said he would report his finding to the board at the next meeting.

When asked by MediaNews Group for more information, he deferred answering questions until his investigation is complete.