Sara Innamorato casts ballot as over-the-counter voting opens in Oakland

By Steve Bohnel / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A steady stream of voters filed in and out of the historic Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in Oakland for the over-the-counter voting available at the satellite election office that opened there on Tuesday. Among those in line was Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato, who showcased the voting method being offered at various sites in the coming days and weeks. 

The museum is a one-stop shop for county voters from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Thursday, where they can drop off their mail-in ballots, register to vote, and participate in the voting method Ms. Innamorato used, where they can apply for and pick up a mail-in ballot, fill it out, and hand it right back to county elections staff. Ms. Innamorato told reporters it took her less than 12 minutes to complete the process. 

Election workers said that as of about 2:30 p.m., roughly 250 voters had used at least one of the election services available at the museum. Ms. Innamorato said it was important to include a location in Oakland because data showed it had been a lower-turnout area in recent election cycles and that it’s a highly transient voting population — where people might need to change their address on file to vote or they’re registering to vote for the first time.

Ms. Innamorato — who took a tour of the various museum displays and rooms, including the Grand Ballroom upstairs, before she cast her ballot — said she has complete faith in the security and fairness of elections countywide, including in Oakland.

“Especially when you're doing over-the-counter voting, there's election staff in there, so that's not run by volunteers,” she said. “That's run by county employees who work at the Elections Division. There's no one who knows elections more in the county than the people who are in that building at this moment, and they are going to walk you through step-by-step.”

Before and after the county executive had arrived on Tuesday, voters from the University of Pittsburgh and around the city were filing in to take advantage of the voter services.

Lola Brown, 52, of Point Breeze, was one of them.

Ms. Brown, an administrator at Pitt, said she has helped volunteer for Democrats on the ballot and chose to vote Tuesday in order not only to take advantage of the county’s services but also to avoid getting text messages and other notifications from campaigns. She said she voted for Vice President Kamala Harris for president and others Democrats up and down the ballot.

A lot of the reason was to return to “sanity” in politics that has been missing in recent years, Ms. Brown said. 

Erica Palmer, 41, of Squirrel Hill, agreed. Ms. Palmer, a professor at Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, said she also supported Democrats across the ballot. She said she prefers Ms. Harris’ views on reproductive rights and the economy. 

For her, the “stakes couldn’t be higher” in a swing state like Pennsylvania, where polls show the race for president is very close. 

“I feel nervous. ... I’m hopeful, but it’s going to be really tight. And everybody should go vote because it’s very easy to vote,” Ms. Palmer said.

Roy Tilton, 19, is a chemistry major at Pitt and lives on campus. His family hails from Butler County, but he registered to vote in Oakland and found it easy to vote over the counter on Tuesday. 

Mr. Tilton declined to say who he voted for — but added that this election was pretty clear-cut in terms of deciding who to vote for because he was concerned about what he has seen on the campaign trail.

“There was a recent Trump rally where there were actual Nazi flags being flown ... it’s not a question in my mind what is objectively good or not in this case,” Mr. Tilton said. 

Luke Cusato, 20, lives off campus in Oakland and is an information science, math and statistics major at Pitt. Mr. Cusato grew up in Westchester, N.Y., but registered to vote here because of how much more his ballot means in a swing state like Pennsylvania. Getting his votes in early gave him “peace of mind,” he said. 

The climate crisis and economic issues were two reasons he voted for Ms. Harris and other Democrats on the ballot, he said. He added, however, that whoever becomes president is a bigger question than just his own vote.

“There’s no way to feel about it because there’s no way I can control it. ... I can’t fill out the ballot for anybody else,” Mr. Cusato said. “So a lot of it is out of my hands.”