How did your neighborhood vote

If you live in Luzerne County you can check it out. 135,965 people in Luzerne County cast a ballot in the Presidential race with Obama topping McCain by just over 11,000 votes, 53%-45%.


I was interested in how my little corner of the world voted and thanks to the Luzerne County Bureau of Elections website I have my answer. 805 out of 1015 registered voters in Ward 4 of Plains Twp made it to the polls Tuesday for a turnout of 80%. The tally was 426 votes for Obama 55% to McCain's 349 or 45%. Paul Kanjorski also topped Lou Barletta 423 votes (54%) to 364 (46%) despite Mayor Lou winning the neighborhood yard sign war.






There were very few problems on election day in the county and as much as I bash the Luzerne County government I must give credit when credit is due. Director of Elections Leonard Piazza and his staff did an outstanding job. They anticipated many of the potential problems with the iVotronic machines and the non-partisan, non-profit organization VotersUnite.org based in Seattle, Washington cited Luzerne County as a national leader in elections management. They released a scathing report on the business practices of Election Systems and Software (ES&S) who is the supplier of our voting machines. The good news is that Piazza didn't give into the ES&S bullying and blackmail and took control of the machines. The report gives the play by play of what happened. Take a minute and check out pages 40 to 42 of the report.


I have found Leonard Piazza to be one of the most responsive people in our county government. Whenever I have asked him a question he has always got back to me in a few hours. He has been a good leader and manager and the best measurement of that is he has hired very good people to do the job. They even keep their cool even when some candidate wanders into the office at 5 minutes to 5PM demanding all sorts of documents and keep them there for hours after closing time. I hope he runs for elective office such as Controller or Commissioner. Piazza even acts on suggestions from cranks like me who wanted campaign finance reports online. He is one the good guys.