Is the Chester County poll book debacle a prelude to 2026 elections? After a heated local contest, this township hopes not.

Now and then, we still see the Amish horse and buggy tooling its way down Fairview Road. Occasionally, someone will alert their neighbors in a Facebook post that a cow or a horse has escaped a pasture and is blocking the road. “That’s so Glenmoore,” a local resident will chime in nostalgically.

But Glenmoore, like the rest of America, is changing, in ways both obvious and subtle.

It’s rare now to see a horse travel down a road that has a steady flow of traffic. Where cows once used to escape to sip the water of the branch of the Brandywine Creek that flows through the part of town residents call “the village,” you can look up a hill and see the large homes of the newest development, just one in an array of luxury homes built on the hill.

Don’t get me wrong. Wallace Township (the Glenmoore postal area is significantly larger) is still pretty amazing. It’s Glen Moore Fire Co. members lined up in a row at a funeral inside one of our historic churches to honor the wife of a longtime member. It’s Pete the cat walking his people to the elementary school on days when it’s in session. Some of my best friends are people I’ve met on walks, often punctuated with a stop at the village coffee shop, the Mean Bean.

The Chester County poll book debacle in the Nov. 4 election didn’t help nurture a sense of calm about something many of us had taken for granted — the sanctity of our vote. In case somehow you missed the hubbub, when independent and third-party voters (there are approximately 18% of us) got to the polling place, we were told that, because they hadn’t gotten the right poll books for us, most of us would have to cast provisional ballots.

I was aware of others in my position. We kept checking to see if our vote showed up on the Voter Services website. As of last Monday, resident Dorothy Kirk, an independent, said, “I am skeptical that our votes were counted.” It took almost 15 days to register Kirk and her husband’s votes on the Voter Services website.

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Unlike some other townships in our environs, which have become increasingly blue, Wallace voters are registered as more than 50% Republican, and have been for many years.

This year, we already had more of a local stress test: a competitive race for one seat in the three-member board of supervisors — replete with candidate websites, campaign literature, and canvassing. That’s a lot of drama for our relatively small (less than 3,000 registered voters) township.

Call me naive, but knowing the local judge of elections, I had confidence my vote would count.

But it wasn’t long before I started to hear from other residents. Let’s just say, they had questions.

Tish Molloy, a former Wallace poll worker, spent a few hours observing the ballot certification process in West Chester after the election, curious to see how it was done. Though onlookers could not see everything, she said, the workers seemed to be “careful, cautious, and mindful,” as well as efficient.

Though Wallace Supervisor Rob Jones, serving as a Republican, had some pointed comments about the potential for mismanagement at the county level, he said he didn’t think anything “nefarious” had occurred. “I just think we have a basically honest populations out there,” said Jones. “I do think the county learned a lesson.”

It’s up to Chester County to rectify its mistake.

As for the township? Jones was ready to move on from what was a fairly heated campaign by Wallace standards, urging neighbors in this small community to avoid viewing each other through a political lens. “The way you show love for people with your township is through what you do. When I make a decision [about the township], I don’t care what their party is. How can I bless the most people in the township?”

Though he came closer than other Democratic candidates in recent memory, Andrew Holets conceded the supervisor’s race to Republican candidate John Thomas last Friday evening. Perhaps it’s not surprising, in a town where so many people know and depend on each other, that his vision is similar to that espoused by Jones. Building trust isn’t just up to leadership, he said. It’s about practicing kindness and doing the right thing.

The bonds of mutual trust and affection are still pretty strong around here.

“Everybody has responsibility,” said Holets. “How they wake up and how they spend their day makes a difference in how much we care for ourselves and others. I don’t want to buy into the division that seems to be here in our country. I don’t think we need to have that locally.”

Nonetheless …

The bonds of mutual trust and affection are still pretty strong around here. At the same time, it’s hard not to wonder what else could go wrong, and it’s arrogant to think ourselves immune from the polarization that has divided neighbor from neighbor and family from family.

While it’s up to Chester County to rectify its mistake, the future of our community is also, as both Jones and Holets said, in our hands. We can’t afford to assume our neighbors trust us. We have to renew those bonds together, one act of service, citizenship, and kindness at a time.

We’ve had our shot across the bows. Now it’s up to us to make sure we get safely to harbor. The cost of drifting is way, way too high.

Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans is a freelance journalist in Chester County. Her writing has appeared in Religion News Service, the National Catholic Reporter, Sojourners, Christian Century, the Washington Post, and The Inquirer.