Lebanon County has launched a new website to provide easier access to important candidate information for voters.
While the website is currently only populated with petitions for the 2025 countywide municipal elections, that’s just the beginning of its eventual capabilities, according to Sean Drasher, director of Lebanon County Voter Registration.
“Moving forward, all of our stuff is going to be up there – all the campaign finance and all campaign-related information,” Drasher said. “If you go there right now, what you’ll see is probably about 80 to 90 percent of it is just petitions from this current election and the remaining 10 percent will be some campaign finance reports that came in at the same time from the previous year.”
Drasher said he’s been focused on getting the petition information posted. However, the desire to digitize all election content has been on his radar, he said, since he was hired to lead the elections bureau in 2021, and all records will be available via the e-file site moving forward.
“We kicked around the idea of digitizing records, and we’re already in the midst of a five-year plan to digitize everything. We keep everything forever, so we still have all of the paperwork from the past,” he said.
Another goal of incorporating this technology benefits voters.
“I like to be as transparent as possible and all of these documents are public record and already available to the public,” Drasher said. “But this puts it (election-based materials) out there for voters.”
The website will also aid those who wish to run for public office, whether for a county row office, municipal government or school board position. Drasher said the registration tab is only for those individuals who are running for office. Any user can access the information without obtaining log-in credentials.
“All the candidates who maybe have full-time jobs and can’t get in here to look through the paperwork and make sure everything is set up right can also use this site,” he said. “This gives them a chance to be able to just hop on the website and check everything out for themselves. They are able to track their own paperwork, make sure everything is submitted, they’re able to track the other stuff that’s going on in their party or the other party, for that matter.”
Drasher said users can click and sort by either a candidate’s name or a given race.
“So what you’ll do is, let’s say you’re looking for Jim, and you go and you sort and you’ll find Jim, and then you click on that name, and it’ll show you his picture and then it’ll have all the campaign petitions he filed, all the campaign finance stuff he filed,” he said. “Right now, it only contains information that’s come in over the last month or two. Some of the campaign finance came to us in January, early February, so the information there is for late January, early February. So there’s not a lot in there, but in another couple of election cycles, it’s going to be a massive database, just massive.”
The new portal provides access to election records – whether you are a diehard fan of elections or just a novice interested in the process.
“Well, if you’re an elections nerd like us, then it’s (access to) all of the election paperwork,” Drasher said. “So the petition paperwork is interesting ’cause you can see what people have run for. You can see, if you want, you can see who signed their petitions.”
Drasher concedes the website may not be for everyone.
“I think most of the stuff won’t be terribly interesting to the general public because they’re not election nerds and they don’t want to sit and read through all these very detailed reports that are kind of boring,” he said.
But for those who want easier access to election records, this website is for you.
“If you want to know who’s donating money to this politician, all that has always been available to you, but you had to go out of your way to find it.You had to go into an elections office, you had to either fill out a form or request the right materials. You had to know what to ask for, for one thing,” Drasher said. “Now you can just hop on our website, it’s all out there. You’ll be able to see who’s donating money to who, and that’s helpful.”
It also streamlines access to elections-related information.
“It opens the door for the average voter who maybe wouldn’t know where to start with something like that. All they have to do is go to the website now and it’s right there at their fingertips,” Drasher said. “They don’t have to know the right lingo. They don’t have to take a couple hours off work to come in here.”
The information that populates the site will help ensure voters will have relevant election information at the click of their mouse.
“While I can’t provide campaign information for the average voter, this is a way I can appropriately get the average voter more information about who is giving money, who is supporting each other’s petitions,” he said. “You’ll be able to go in and not just see who signed a petition, you’ll be able to see who passed around a petition for somebody else. If someone really does care about politics, they want to learn more about local politics, this is a good starting point for them because it’s not just a campaign flyer that says, ‘Vote for me because I’m the best and the other person’s a jerk.’ This is actually the money, who’s giving money to who and who’s helping each other out behind the scenes.”
In stating that Lebanon County is among the first in Pennsylvania to turn to this technology, Drasher noted it was created at no cost to county taxpayers since Election Integrity grant funding was used for the project.
Lebanon County administrator Jamie Wolgemuth told LebTown he’s proud this service is being offered to county residents.
“I’m very proud of the work the elections department staff has done on this,” Wolgemuth said, with Drasher citing department employee Jamie Shoemaker for the work she did. “Election information is more easily accessible to the public and this site heightens election transparency.”
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