Residents raise concerns about vote verification and an alleged apartment assault during public comment

At the start of Monday’s standing committees meeting, two residents addressed the council during the public-comment period: one urged greater access to vote records and legal change, the other described an alleged assault and said building management did not intervene.

Doctor Ronald Lynn Miller of Lawrenceville told the council that a voter verification system is needed so individual voters can confirm that votes were recorded for the correct candidate. “No voter in any election in the United States of America, as far as we know, can check the voting record to make sure that his or her vote has been misplaced, lost, or misapplied,” Miller said, and said his organization is pursuing a 2028 initiative to seek a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that citizens must be able to access vote records to ensure their ballots were applied correctly. Miller said his group surveyed residents across Pittsburgh’s nine council districts and elsewhere in the country about the issue.

Later in the public-comment period, Jevon F. Brown of (address given as 07:15 Mercer Street in the transcript) recounted an incident at his building in which, he said, a woman identified as Rashida McKinney struck a man with a branch and later wrestled with a building manager. Brown said he had repeatedly told management he feared for his safety and that staff told him to call police. He described witnesses and said the woman had been previously banned from the property. Brown closed by asking the council for assistance.

Both comments were made during the public-comment portion of the meeting; no council action or formal referral was recorded during the standing committees session. The meeting proceeded to committee business after public comment.