Election judge quits amid scandal
Bickford faces charges of ballot tampering during June primary
The Lehigh County judge of elections facing criminal charges of tampering with ballots during the June primary has stepped down from her post.
Everett “Erika” Bickford of Allentown confirmed Wednesday that she tendered her resignation last week at the urging of Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin. Bickford had previously vowed not to resign or plead guilty to any wrongdoing while overseeing the city’s 3rd Ward polling place in June at the Lehigh County Government Center.
Bickford waived a preliminary hearing Tuesday afternoon before District Judge David M Howells Jr., according to court records. A formal arraignment is scheduled Jan. 5. before Lehigh County Judge
Anna-Kristie M. Marks.
Martin earlier this month charged Bickford, 70, with two election code violations: insertion and alteration of entries in documents, and prying into ballots, both misdemeanors.
The Lehigh County Board of Elections asked Martin to investigate Bickford after hearing election fraud allegations made by Enid Santiago, whofell just short of ousting incumbent Peter Schweyer in the Democratic primary for the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s 22nd District.
Santiago accused Bickford, a self-proclaimed Schweyer supporter, of altering ballots in Schweyer’s favor. Bickford admitted she darkened voters’ bubbles about 30 times and trimmed ballots’ jagged edges, but only so voting machines would accept them.
Detectives examined all of the ballots cast at the 3rd Ward polling place and found no evidence of erasure marks, whiteout, or any other indica
tions of a double vote in any of the races listed on the ballot, Martin said in an Oct. 5 news release. She was not charged with altering or changing votes to favor either Schweyer or Santiago.
Schweyer won the primary election by 55 votes, or 1.26 percentage points. But Santiago clobbered Schweyer in the 3rd Ward, garnering 95 votes to his 52. Most notably, of the 85 ballots cast in Bickford’s presence, Schweyer received 22 votes to Santiago’s 63.
Bickford, a pastor, former Allentown mayoral candidate and community organizer who founded the Stevens Park Community Safe Neighborhoods Association, maintained Wednesday that she acted with good intentions and did nothing immoral. She’s reluctant to admit wrongdoing in court.
But Bickford said she does plan to apply for Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition, a pretrial intervention program that enables first-time offenders to avoid a conviction.
It wasn’t immediately clear who would replace Bickford, an elected official, as judge in the 3rd Ward. When an elections judge position is vacated more than five days before an election, the county Court of Common Pleas appoints a person to fill the vacancy, according to state law.
Lehigh County Chief Elections Clerk Tim Benyo said earlier this month that someone was prepared to replace Bickford should she resign or be convicted prior to the Nov. 3 election.
In addition to asking Martin to investigate Bickford, the county election board hired an independent auditor to examine votes cast in the city’s 1st and 3rd wards because of discrepancies in the number of ballots cast and the number of voters present as reported by the elections board and Department of State.
The audit was completed earlier this month, but Benyo said Tuesday his office was not yet in possession of a final report.