A Montco official ended up at the White House to advise on voting accessibility ahead of 2024. Here are some of his ideas.

Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija wants the county to set a national example in how to make voting more accessible.

On Tuesday, Makhija joined Vice President Kamala Harris for a voting rights roundtable at the White House with civil rights leaders and activists, a sign that the Montgomery County Democrat’s push on the issue has already gained national notice ahead of November’s general election.

“I’m excited to share ideas on all the steps we can take to protect the right to vote, and I believe Montgomery County can be the leader in this realm, not just in Pennsylvania but nationally,” Makhija said in an interview before the meeting.

The White House panel placed Makhija alongside major figures in that national debate over voting access, including NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson, among others.

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As the chair of Montgomery County’s election board, Makhija will have a major role in setting voting policy for the third biggest county in a key swing state. The Democrat, who took office in January, previously taught election law at the University of Pennsylvania and worked on voting rights on a national scale as the leader of the South Asian civic organization Indian American Impact.

What are some of his ideas to expand voter access in Montgomery County?

Ballot curing is a process of allowing voters to fix or redo mail ballots with technical issues that may not otherwise be counted on Election Day. While various states require counties to notify voters when their ballot has an issue that would need to be cured to count, Pennsylvania leaves it up to the counties to decide whether to notify voters at all.

In the 2023 general election, Montgomery County received 75,655 mail-in ballots. Of those, 2,065, or 2.7%, had issues to be cured, Makhija said.

The most common issue — just under half of these cases — was ballots that were returned to the sender, which can be the result of voters entering the wrong address when they sign up to vote, for example. Another common issue is when a ballot is “naked,” meaning it wasn’t placed in an extra “secrecy envelope.”

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Sam Oliker-Friedland, the executive director of the Institute for Responsive Government, said that the naked ballot regulation — which he called a “very uncommon Pennsylvania-specific problem” — makes curing in the commonwealth especially important.

Other technical issues include the voter’s identity not being verified, an invalid date, no date, damage to the ballot, or no signature.

But even though Montgomery County already contacts voters whose ballots need to be cured, less than 10% of those ballots were actually cured, according to Makhija. The idea of the county sitting on votes that could be counted with simple fixes disturbs him, so he wants to make it as easy as possible for voters to cure their ballots.

“What we’re doing is simply making sure that everyone who is entitled to have their vote counted has their vote counted,” he said.

The commissioner wants to create a mobile curing process that involves county employees going directly to voters’ homes and assisting them. That would bring the curing process directly to voters instead of requiring them to drive to the county’s voter services office in Norristown.

Makhija hasn’t ironed out the logistics of exactly what this effort would look like, but said it could involve informing voters of the issue with their ballot, having them sign a cancel-and-replace form, and giving them a replacement ballot on the spot.

But Tom DiBello, the lone Republican on the three-member board of commissioners, said government resources would be better used addressing other issues instead of “driving around the county trying to get someone to correct a ballot that they should have done correctly” in the first place.

DiBello said that he doesn’t think it’s necessary for the county to contact voters whose ballots have issues. And although he’s willing to support the practice as is, he believes that taking the effort further could harvest more mistrust in elections.

“The processes and procedures to do all that is well defined and documented, and I don’t believe we need to go any further with that,” he said.

Oliker-Friedland said that the idea is unique, and that governments across the country are looking at ways to make curing easier. In Colorado, for example, voters can cure ballots by text message.

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Makhija’s ambitions don’t stop at mobile curing.

For example, he wants to offer voting materials in more languages than required. Federal law mandates that counties provide voting materials in languages other than English only if 10,000, or more than 5%, of voting-age citizens are members of a language minority. Philadelphia provides voting materials in Spanish and Chinese, but Montgomery County does not meet the threshold for the requirement.

“The idea is, we want to go above and beyond the bare minimum,” Makhija said.

He also wants to look for ways to bring voter registration and polling sites mores directly to voters, such as at nursing homes or college campuses. He said he wants residents to have access to voter resources whenever they interact with the county as part of what he called “a whole of government approach to supporting our voting rights.”

DiBello, the Republican commissioner, said there are already enough opportunities to register to vote.

For example, under a state policy that began last year, Pennsylvania residents are automatically registered to vote when they get their driversslicenses, unless they opt out.

“At what point do people take responsibility for utilizing all of the already available processes in place to register?” DiBello said.

In addition to his mobile ballot curing idea, Makhija floated the possibility of expanding the county’s satellite operations.

Since 2020, the county has offered four satellite offices, in Pottstown, Lansdale, Lower Merion, and Willow Grove, which have been open during the two weekends before the vote-by-mail application deadline. But Makhija wants to offer more locations on more days.

“We want to take every step possible to make it easier for people to vote,” Makhija said.