Substance found on mail-in ballot in Chester County prompts hazmat response

Thank you for being here this afternoon. I'm Chester County District Attorney Christopher DeBernasurove. To my right is the chair of the Chester County Commissioners Joshua Maxwell and Chester County Sheriff Kevin Dykes. To my left is Chief County Detective David Sassa and we're here today to provide an update into the incident that occurred at this Chester County Government Services building this morning. This morning a Chester County worker from voter services was completing their normal process. They were intaking mail-in ballots, organizing them and storing them for election day. As that employee handled one of the ballots he could feel a non-liquid substance from the outside of the envelope as he was handling it. I can't describe beyond what that substance was because the envelope was never opened. Based on that 9-1-1 was called and a hazmat team was deployed. Everything went according to our protocol. Employees in the vicinity were isolated and monitored for their safety. The building was immediately shut down by the sheriff's department. The hazmat team came into the room. They checked for chemical and biological hazards. Within 45 minutes, they were able to confirm that they found none of that. The room was safe. The ballot in question has already been turned over to the FBI for additional analysis, and the building was reopened within 90 minutes. It's a tribute to the great work of Chester County emergency response, right? And that includes the hazmat team, the Westchester Police Department, the Westchester Fire Department, the Chester County Sheriff's Office, the county detectives, and every employee that works in this building. So now that everyone is safe, I can confirm that we've started an investigation into this incident. It is in its infancy stages, right? This just happened, so I can't emphasize that enough. So right now, what I can confirm is that the Chester County detectives, which is an arm of my office, and the FBI are jointly investigating this incident. And I've been in contact with the U.S. Attorney's Office, including U.S. Attorney David Metcalf. In the end, I want to end my remarks with two really clear messages. First, I want to recognize the work of employees at Chester County Voter Services. They're truly doing a service not just for the voters in this county, but everyone in the state. And voter services workers across this state are what make this election process happen. So no matter your politics, no matter who you're rooting will win on Tuesday, and no matter who loses on Tuesday, we should take a moment to think about the service that they are doing, because they are doing it under stressful conditions, knowing that something like this can completely destroy their day and can put them and the entire team at risk. And finally, I want the public to know that here in Chester County, we are all ready for the challenges that are coming over the next four and a half days. We actually a month ago had a cross department meeting where we did exercises and scenarios and this was one of them. We executed our plan to perfection today. And so, while this is, I think, disturbing news for us to have to work through, in the end, I want all the voters to know that we're prepared, and we're prepared because we work together. Commissioner, do you want to say anything? Yes, thank you, District Attorney, and I think it's important to acknowledge the leadership of RDA and our sheriff, among others in the county, to be able to respond so quickly to this incident. This is a reflection of just how prepared all the departments in Chester County are, including the DA's office and the sheriff's office. I just want to be clear that there's been very little, if any, disruption to election services here in the county. The process was stopped for about three hours. The building was opened in 90 minutes, as the DA said, another 90 minutes to clear that space and resume getting those ballots handled and sorted and prepared to be open come Election Day. I want to reiterate something the District Attorney said, and that no ballot was opened here today. What was discovered was discovered from the outside of the ballot and the team is back to work and will be caught up by the end of the day today. So with that, I'll turn it back to the district attorney and open up the questions. Commissioner, can you tell voters that they have nothing to be worried about? Because I'm sure some people are going to be a little afraid just hearing that this building was on lockdown. You know, what is your reassurance to voters as a member of the Board of Elections for Chester County? I'm starting to be a little afraid just hearing that this building was on lockdown. What is your reassurance about this as a member of the Board of Elections for Chester County? In Chester County, I think across the country, you have to expect the unexpected, right? And we have a lot of resources here in this county in a personnel perspective, and we're ready for anything today. This is not the first time we've had an incident like this in the county, and we handled the last one efficiently. Thank And Chester County voters can count on an accurate and fair election this coming Tuesday. I know you said it's early in the investigation and it still has to be sent to the FBI, you but can you describe further this non-liquid substance? It just hasn't been open, so I don't want to give inaccurate very information, but they felt that something was inside. It certainly weighed a little differently. When you handle a bunch of exterior mail-in ballots, much. I think you kind of know what it feels like. And we're right now talking, our detectives are talking with those witnesses and getting more details. So right now, I just, other than non-liquid substance, I don't have detail that I can confirm for you right now. PA, I know you said this is very early in the investigation, but we've seen other situations of envelopes being sent to electoral offices or even offices of representatives for the state, both in PA and other states. Is there any indication that this incident is connected in any way to all those other instances we've seen recently? So I'm really familiar with that because we have strong federal partners in Chester County. I actually got a briefing over the weekend from the FBI when that incident happened. So we're still looking at those connections. I don't know of one right now, but I can tell you, again, we've been working on this for maybe an hour, right? The ballot was. Handed off within the last hour. There's other testing that's going to have to be done. And the investigators are working right now. We'll put their heads together at the end of the day and figure out what the next steps are. That's That's the hope. They have additional tests that they're going to do. We rely on them in instances like this, just like the reporting from the national issue that happened about two to three weeks ago. We're going to use those tests and their resources to help refine what the substance actually is. We're not sharing any images right now, no. And just to be clear, how does the ballot... That's what we're working on right now, right? Like there's two ways that can happen via mail and Dropbox. And I know that Voter Services is working with our investigators and we are trying to distill the path of that. I'm sure if it is by mail, we'll be working with the Postal Inspector Services. Again, we will call in every resource to work on this and we're going to make sure that we get to the bottom of it. Give us a sense of what the envelope is. Do they wear gloves when they handle these things? I mean, I have no idea. Talking about the hazmat team, the hazmat team came all geared up, right? I mean, the staff is handling ballots as normal. I'm unaware of them wearing latex gloves to handle these things. It looks like a mail-in ballot, right? That's what I will tell you. Just felt that the person could feel and feel the weight and feel something else inside of it. But I don't know if you've heard of it. And thankfully, it was fairly straightforward, and we were able to efficiently clear those people, clear the building. Everyone is safe. We're ready to go with this election on Tuesday. I think any way people are comfortable voting legally, they should feel comfortable doing so. If it's good enough for the Pope, I think it's good enough for every American. You also mentioned that you're ready for any challenges that may come. I know you can't predict the future, but in terms of that preparation, what are you prepared for that could possibly come the next few days? We're not going to speak to the specific scenarios that the team goes through, But between the sheriff's office, Emergency Operations Center, Emergency Services, the DA's office, local police departments. You have to be ready for anything these days. So we activate our Emergency Operations Center every single election, which means we're tracking things throughout the county. We have roamers throughout the county to respond to an incident if that may come up. And we have a great coalition of governments here ready to make sure that Chester County is in the news on Tuesday for running a very fair election. And I'll just add to that, for example, right, like the Sheriff's Department will be staffing personnel in our in our facility on Election Day. My office on the D.A. side, we will have an A.D.A. on call from nine to nine on Election Day. County detectives, state police will be sitting in the emergency operations center on Election Day because we want to have as few phone calls and as many face to face meetings as as close to the source information as possible. So we can react, whether it's something like this, or whether it's... Bad weather or a down tree, right? Some of these are very straightforward scenarios, but we want everyone to vote. We want everyone to be able to get to their polling places or to drop their mail-in ballots in. And we are all invested, right? No matter what the political party you affiliate yourself with, no matter how you are voting, we just want you to vote. Commissioner Maxwell, I'm sure that the ballot books have been checked to make sure all the independent voters, third party voters names are on this year unlike last year. And then can you just let us know a little bit about the voter services plan for that day? How many people from the county are working in voter services to ensure election integrity? I think it's important in this day and age that you triple check everything. And we've developed We've also developed a search team this year of employees throughout the county who have different expertises that maybe not every election worker specifically has. So we have folks in the election office who have been working here for years to understand the processes. We have folks from throughout county government coming in to help them to make sure that everything we have, every process we have is triple checked. And we've had virtually no issues so far this year in terms of getting our ballots out the next day after they're applied for. And we learned from the experience last year that we need to shore things up and very proud of the team that they were able to do to do that this year. It's about 50 employees, 30 for road services. We'll go from around 25 and then we'll boost that up probably about double through the surge team. So it changes day to day. So if we get a lot of ballots, we need to process on a Thursday. We'll bring in an extra 10 or 15 employees that night. Today we were delayed about three hours, so we'll stay a little bit later today with some of our surge team if we need to, and be ready to go again tomorrow if we need to. Commissioner, will the way you process ballots change because of anything today? We'll certainly review. After every election, we sit down with the district attorney's office, the sheriff, and make sure that we're keeping our employees as safe as possible. We've had an incident like this in the past. It is paramount. To the DA's point that we make working in elections very safe is not a job people are signing up to do quite often right now. They've been given every reason to feel unsafe, not specific to this incident, but just general attention on election workers. And we have a duty as elected officials to make sure that they're as safe as possible. So we'll do a feedback loop with them to make sure that they have everything they need to be and feel safe. Final question. When was the last time you had an incident like this? We had a bomb threat on Election Day two years ago, right, that required some evacuation. So, I mean, that's the latest one. And then about five years ago, we had an incident with something else in the ballot and had to address it similar to this. Thank you, sir. Students have that question Thank you, everybody.