It’s a good thing Montgomery County Republican Chairwoman Liz Preate Havey is not holding her breath.
It’s been months now since she filed a report with Montgomery County officials who promised to ask District Attorney Kevin Steele to investigate a video of a Democratic committeewoman in Upper Dublin putting some 30 ballots into a drop box for the November 2021 election.
The Delaware Valley Journal also asked the DA’s spokeswoman about the investigation but received no reply.
In an interview for the Delaware Valley Journal podcast, Havey said it’s important for the public to have faith that their votes will be counted. But with the drop box system, “there are so few security measures in place right now, that getting rid of the one or two ones that we have makes the election less secure and makes people believe that there’s an opportunity for fraud and that fraud has occurred. And what we’re trying to do is not disenfranchise voters. We’re trying to get people to vote.”
Meanwhile in Delaware County, District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer recently announced he closed an investigation into the November 2020 election after finding no fraud.
While Republicans have not embraced mail-in ballots in the recent past, Havey plans a big push for the fall election, and she said both GOP Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial nominee state Sen. Doug Mastriano are on board.
Havey comes from a political family. Her father, Ernie Preate was a Pennsylvania attorney general. In addition to being the Montco GOP chair and secretary for the state GOP, Havey also practices law and is the first woman to chair the august 122-year-old Pennsylvania Society. She is also on the board of the National Constitution Center.
As for the congressional race, she called Christian Nascimento “a wonderful candidate.” Nascimento is running against incumbent Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Montgomery).
Nascimento “is the first person in his family to go to college,” she said. His parents emigrated from Italy. He became an executive with Comcast and his wife is raising four children.
“He spent his whole life in Montgomery County,” said Havey. “So he’s very much committed to this district and knows this district really well.”
And Nascimento is talking about kitchen table issues like inflation while Dean is “hating Donald Trump and really not about fixing the problems that we see our voters are suffering from in this district.”
Havey is optimistic that the Republican candidates will win this fall because of President Joe Biden’s unpopularity, polling at 33 percent.
“I think people will vote their pocketbook,” said Havey. “There’s a lot of energy upset and anger against the Democrats in general and, according to polls, independents are dramatically breaking for Republicans two and three to one at this point.”
