MERCER COUNTY Expanded panel will probe problems with the election

Jim Bennington has taken the blame for voting machine failures in 13 precincts.
MERCER, Pa. -- County commissioners appointed an expanded committee, which will now include a member from the NAACP, to investigate the Nov. 2 general election.
And commissioners indicated Thursday that calls for the firing of Jim Bennington, elections director, may soon be resolved.
Commissioner Olivia Lazor said that she has talked with Bennington and that a letter will soon be forthcoming from him. Commissioners would not, however, say whether it would be a letter of resignation, stating they could not comment about a personnel matter.
Bennington, whose office is closed for the official elections count, did not return calls made to his home Thursday night.
Robert Lark, county Democratic Party chairman, and some others have called for commissioners to fire Bennington, who took responsibility for the programming problem that shut down electronic voting machines in 13 precincts and possibly lost thousands of votes.
Residents' outcry
Several residents attending the commissioners' meeting again asked that Bennington be fired.
In addition, Lark said the Democratic Party may call for a recount if missing votes in one Farrell precinct are not found. He said 289 people voted there but only 51 presidential votes were counted.
Committee
Commissioners named the committee members and set their organizational meeting for noon Nov. 29.
The expanded panel will include eight members, up from the seven they had discussed earlier in the week.
Lazor explained she was contacted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and asked why a nonminority Urban League member would be representing blacks on the panel. Blacks heavily populate the 13 precincts where problems were experienced. Commissioners agreed and added the seat for a representative still to be named by the NAACP.
Other members are Lark; Don Wilson, Republican Party chairman; Peggy Ruggles, League of Women Voters; James Long, executive director of the Shenango Valley Urban League; Michael Coulter of Grove City College; Kathleen Paul of Penn State Shenango Campus; and a member yet to be named from the Pennsylvania Economy League.
At the request of Commissioner Michele Brooks, the letter to be sent each panel member will not ask members to keep their meetings closed to the media and the public. That decision will be left up to the committee, although commissioners expressed concern that interest groups may try to pressure panel members to open their sessions.
Lark said he thinks the meetings should be open, stating, "If there is dirty linen, let's air it in public."
More from the people
Several residents had new questions and complaints about the election. One woman asked whether it was true that electrical wires to the machines in Farrell were cut. District Attorney James Epstein said that there was no evidence of any deliberate sabotage and that the problems were caused by "a systems failure."
Bonnie Silvis of Sharon said she encountered a series of problems in her precinct, which was not one with major problems.
She said she was first told she wasn't registered in her regular precinct and sent to another table. She finally was sent back to the first one where workers found her registration information. When she voted, she said she could not get the machine to move off the first page and had to call a poll worker for help. When she finished voting, the screen went blank. She thought this just was the way the machine worked until later, when she realized from news reports that her vote probably had not registered.
Lazor told the residents "things are going to change" in the election office. "Rest assured, the next election will be handled differently," she added.