Editorial: Remove mystery from Westmoreland elections office move
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This is the homestretch. The 2020 election is one month out. Two years — possibly four, depending on how you count it — of campaigning for the top office in the country is about to come to a head in the presidential election.
So can we please stop doing things that will mess that up — or give the appearance of doing that?
Last week, Westmoreland County officials confirmed that county employee Scott Sistek had been fired. That happens. People lose their jobs every day for reasons big and small, including things that might be egregious mistakes and sometimes things that aren’t anybody’s fault at all.
But Sistek was not any employee and his dismissal does not come at just any time.
Sistek was the deputy director of the county elections office. For a time over the summer, he was the office’s interim director after the resignation of Beth Lechman, who spent 14 years working Westmoreland elections including four as the director.
But Sistek’s tenure was shorter. He transferred in spring, was in charge in July, became deputy director in August and then was suspended in September. At first, it was paid. Eight days later, it was an unpaid suspension. Then, he was out.
The issue? There is the secrecy. What merits such an employment roller coaster? While new to the elections office, Sistek — who is also the Democratic mayor of New Stanton — was a longtime county employee, which included serving as chief of staff to a former commissioner, Tom Bayla, also a Democrat.
There is also the timing. When the county has announced it will hire as many as 1,800 poll workers to make the election go smoothly, why suspend and fire the deputy director over the course of two weeks with the election looming just around the corner?
The nation is anticipating a record turnout in a highly contentious, highly anticipated, highly politicized election Nov. 3. The coronavirus pandemic has made mail-in ballots an abnormally prominent part of the process. The role of the postal service has been in the spotlight. And the closer the election comes, the more tense and adversarial the whole process seems to become.
This is, in short, no normal first Tuesday in November.
It isn’t that there is no reason someone could be fired this close to an election, but the closer it gets, the more it should be accompanied by explanation to ensure that the trust people must have in the people who coordinate and count the ballots is maintained.
“There is no politics involved in this whatsoever,” said Commissioner Doug Chew, a Republican. “It has nothing to do with any election issues.”
If that is true, why did it have to happen now?
These questions do not second-guess the decision. If the commissioners agreed it was necessary, so be it.
The point is that the people deserve confidence in the process, and there is nothing that gives more confidence than open, honest, transparent answers. That is true every day, in every department.
But when we are in that homestretch to the election, it is even more important.