First, they can't be from the same party; they're deliberately mixed in Cook County. There's a Republican EJ (usually multiple) in every polling location.

Second, the story we're talking about here is about a primary election; the whole contest took place within a single party.

Third, I'm not sure why it would matter. OK, they're all Democrats. Now what? Even if all 4 EJs wanted to corrupt the results of an election, it's not super obvious how you'd undetectably do that. The paper ballots get hauled back to the central counting facility; the registrations have to match the ballots, etc.

> Third, I'm not sure why it would matter. OK, they're all Democrats.

I don't know about you, but I used to change my party affiliation before the primary to be able to vote in the election I care the most about... (I'm not from that state though).

The report lays out exactly how this was done; it appears that among other things they were casting actual ballots on behalf of unlikely voters.

> Inside the polling place and while the polls were open, Beren would advise actual in-person voters to support Myers’ candidates and also cast fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates on behalf of voters she knew would not or did not physically appear at the polls (emphasis mine)

These where primaries, so it’s not clear why the other party would care.

Technically, they still could be all from one party checking the result for the other party.... even in primaries.

Does political affiliation affect integrity somehow?

It certainly creates conflicts of interest with the goal of an election, or rather a mixed group decreases the motivations for collusion

>"Does political affiliation affect integrity somehow?"

I'd say so, but not in a sense that the effect is only or even primarily associated with [insert political party here].

Edit: We like to envision Judges as impeccably impartial, but they have a considerable amount of leeway, ambiguity, and procedural caveats they can employ should they choose to make partisan decisions. Given that judges are often selected by, or elected with support from, a political party machine, it stands to reason that they can be swayed to help the party that is responsible for their position. Especially if there is plausible deniability of bias or wrongdoing.

If you need all the members to sign off,

And a member of party X is more likely to be willing to cheat to benefit party X,

Then having all the members that need to sign off be from party X does indeed increase the ability to cheat for party X.

I'm not sure how it works in Philadelphia, but in Chicagoland the EJs don't generally know each other; we meet for the first time the night before the election to set up the polling station. If you floated the (insane) idea of trying to rig a precinct, the likelihood of one of the other EJs reporting you is extraordinarily high. Meanwhile: the likelihood of you being able to flip even a township election by doing this is low. It just doesn't add up.

I think you have to have some pretty huge procedural gaps to make this viable, which is my point here.