DV Journal

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court landed yet another blow against Democrat U.S. Sen. Bob Casey’s hope of overturning his defeat at the hands of his Republican challenger.

The court ruled 4-3 in favor of Dave McCormick’s request to reject undated mail ballots.

“[M]ail-in and absentee ballots that fail to comply with the requires of the Pennsylvania Election Code SHALL NOT BE COUNTED for purposes of the election held on November 5, 2024,” the justices ruled Monday.

McCormick, the Pennsylvania Republican Party, and the Republican National Committee invoked the court’s rarely-used King’s Bench Power. The authority allows the Supreme Court to consider “any case pending in a lower court.”

The court ordered that all Boards of Elections in the state, “including … in Bucks County, Montgomery County, and Philadelphia County, SHALL COMPLY with the prior rulings of this Court.”

It wasn’t a surprise. On Nov. 1, a unanimous Supreme Court stayed a late October ruling by the Commonwealth Court that said 69 undated and incorrectly dated absentee and mail-in ballots in a Philadelphia special election could be counted.

McCormick’s lead over incumbent Casey was almost 18,000 votes in unofficial tallies. And while both the Associated Press and DecisionDeskHQ have called the race for McCormick, Casey has refused to concede. He declined to waive his right for a recount last week. That should be completed by Nov. 27.

Adding fuel to the fire were decisions by Democrats in Bucks and Montgomery Counties to validate undated or incorrectly dated ballots – even though they admitted to ignoring the state Supreme Court.

“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country. People violate laws anytime they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention,” said Bucks County Commission Chair Diane Ellis-Marseglia last week during a meeting.

Ellis-Marseglia donated $600 to Casey’s campaign in September.

Republicans said Monday they could ask for legal action against Ellis-Marseglia and other Democrats who flouted the ruling.

Supreme Court Justice Kevin Brobson appeared to acknowledge Ellis-Marseglia’s statements in his concurring opinion Monday on the ballot decision.

“Indeed, this Court has held that administrative agencies, like county boards of elections, lack the authority to declare unconstitutional the very statutes from which they derive their existence and which they are charged to enforce,” Republican Brobson wrote.

Fellow Republican Justice Sallie Mundy and Democrat Justice David Wecht joined Brobson’s concurrence.

Democrat Justice Kevin Dougherty also ruled in favor of McCormick, but did not issue a statement. On Nov. 1, Dougherty heaped scorn on the Commonwealth Court for its decision on undated ballots. He accused it of changing the electoral game “on the very eve of the election” after mail ballots had been shipped and returned. He noted voters, boards of elections, and election workers were already advised on “the handling of undated and misdated ballots.”

Other Democrat justices were not convinced.

Justice Christine Donohue wrote she was “unpersuaded” by Republican arguments over the flawed ballots. She wanted the ballots to be challenged through the courts of common pleas, as written in the Election Code.

Donohue voted in favor of staying the Commonwealth Court’s decision on undated ballots on Nov. 1.

McCormick’s campaign hailed the ruling.

“[It’s] a massive setback to Sen. Casey’s attempt to count illegal ballots. Bucks County and others blatantly violated the law in an effort to help Sen. Casey. Sen.-elect McCormick is very pleased with this ruling and looks forward to taking the oath of office in a few short weeks,” said Elizabeth Gregory, McCormick communications director.

She later told DVJournal all justices agreed with McCormick on the merits.

Gov. Josh Shapiro said, “As I have made clear for years, every eligible Pennsylvanian’s vote should be counted in every race – and thanks to the hard work of Republican and Democratic election officials all across the commonwealth, Pennsylvania has held another free, fair, safe, and secure election.

“As counties continued counting ballots from the 2024 general election and a mandatory statewide recount begins in the U.S. Senate race, they were confronted with a lack of legal clarity surrounding undated mail-in ballots that caused significant confusion and put counties in a challenging legal position. Both my predecessor and I have repeatedly called on lawmakers to deliver greater clarity on mail-in voting – and due to certain legislative actors refusing to act on critical election reforms, this issue had been left to the courts,” Shapiro said.

“Given this lack of clarity, county officials in each of our 67 counties were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t – likely facing legal action no matter which decision they made on counting.”

Shapiro expects county officials “to adhere to this ruling and all the applicable laws governing our elections.”

“As we move forward, I want to be clear: any insinuation that our laws can be ignored or do not matter is irresponsible and does damage to faith in our electoral process. The rule of law matters in this commonwealth, and as I have always said, it is critical for counties and officials in both parties to respect it with both their rhetoric and their actions. As governor, I will continue working to protect our democracy and the votes of all eligible Pennsylvanians – and we will continue to have free, fair, safe, secure elections in our commonwealth.”

The Casey campaign has not commented.

Earlier in the day, Casey campaign manager Tiernan Donohue accused Republicans of trying to disenfranchise voters and vowed  to keep fighting. “Sen. Casey is fighting to ensure Pennsylvanians’ voices are heard and to protect their right to participate in our democracy – just like he has done throughout his entire career,” she said.

PennLive.com also published an article from Casey that claimed the debate was “about the constitutionality of disenfranchising thousands of voters due to a requirement that has no bearing on a voters’ eligibility and has no impact in deterring fraud.”

It’s the eighth time an automatic recount will happen in a Pennsylvania election since 2004, according to Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt’s office and the second involving McCormick. He lost to Mehmet Oz two years ago in the GOP U.S. Senate primary.

McCormick was in Washington, D.C. last week for U.S. Senate orientation.

Pennsylvanians can be assured that their ballot is safe, secure and accurately counted, no matter the rhetoric repeated by those who seek to undermine public confidence in our elections.

How do I know this? I’ve worked on multiple campaigns of Republicans running for offices from township supervisor to the United State Senate and am intimately familiar with the built-in security features, redundancies and transparencies in our election processes.

For me personally, the most important component of our elections are the individuals who staff them. The people working inside a precinct on Election Day live in the very communities in which they are assisting for more than the 13 hours the polls are open. They are our neighbors. They are our fellow PTA members. We see them at church, the grocery store and other places in our community. And we can trust them.

What’s more is that these individuals receive regular, detailed training about our elections and their responsibilities. These civic-minded Pennsylvanians – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – take their jobs seriously. They know it’s up to them to safeguard the many systems we have in place to make sure votes are cast fairly and counted correctly.

Three of these poll worker positions are elected by the voters in each precinct: the Judge of Elections and the Majority and Minority Inspectors of Election. Should the positions remain unfilled due to a lack of candidates, something that happens with increasing frequency, the responsibility of appointing qualified and trained individuals for these and other necessary roles reverts to the county election boards and officials.

Outside of these posts, the people who work our elections are everyday Pennsylvanians, and many of them have been giving their time as service to their community for a long time. They receive detailed training about each part of the process, gain valuable experience, help their communities and even get paid for their work and for attending training.

Our poll workers are the backbone of a system that protects your vote. This system of checks and balances includes things like public inspections of voting machines, regular election equipment testing, confirming voter eligibility when casting ballots and multiple redundancies to ensure the results are accurate and reflect the voice of Pennsylvanians.

Our election laws and systems also allow Pennsylvanians, regardless of their party affiliation, to observe virtually every step in the process, ensuring transparency. Anyone can witness it by signing up to be a poll worker in their neighborhood.

If you have questions or concerns about our election processes, step up and volunteer to work inside a precinct on Election Day. You’ll find what those of us who are intimately familiar with our election processes already know – our elections are secure and the results reflect the will of the voters.

Please follow DVJournal on social media: Twitter@DVJournal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal

First-grade teachers use Venn diagrams to teach students about comparing and contrasting different data sets. For example, you can draw one circle around different words to describe Batman and another around words to describe Superman. Then, overlay the circles to separate their similarities and differences.

Superman has superpowers and can fly. Batman has no superpowers and drives the Batmobile. Those characteristics would not overlap in the circles.  However, both have secret identities (Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent), wear capes, and fight evil. So, those traits overlap in an easy-to-understand visual.

Apparently, Vice President Kamala Harris believes the American people only enjoy the comprehension level of a first grader because when she is not cackling about jokes only she can understand or offering confusing word salads such as “Community banks are in the community,”  she prattles on about her love of Venn diagrams. Perhaps she should use her favorite tool to analyze whether her ideas for America are truly nonpartisan and for all communities, as she loves to claim when she blunders her way through public appearances and her approval ratings tank.

Last week, Harris led her second meeting of our country’s “Voting Rights Leaders,” which her press release described as “on the frontlines of protecting voting rights.” Harris specifically talked about “promoting voting access for all communities.” In reviewing the list of “leaders” who participated in the meeting, perhaps Harris should have had a first grader draw a Venn diagram for her to confirm that the leaders spoke for all communities, as she insisted.

The first grader would have gone back to her and said, “Vice President Harris – you have created an echo chamber of far left-leaning groups, so I can only draw one circle. If you truly want representatives of all communities, perhaps you should include organizations like the Heritage Foundation, Public Interest Legal Foundation, or the Federalist Society so you can round out the viewpoints.”

Alas, it appears Harris thinks we are all nincompoops and morons devoid of critical thinking skills because she purposely stacked her group chockablock with leftist ideologues. In that regard, she takes her cues from President Joe Biden, who shamelessly issued an Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting soon after he took office, claiming that “people of color” confront significant obstacles to voting, including “difficulties with voter registration, lack of election information, and barriers to access at polling places.”

When the far left makes these kinds of statements, they never provide concrete examples, likely because none exist. After all, in Pennsylvania, you can register to vote many different ways: online, by mail, in person at your county registration office, or at a plethora of government agencies, including the DMV. How exactly does this system exclude people of color? Spoiler alert: It does not.

What else can the government possibly do to get its citizens to register – show up at their homes? Well – as a matter of fact, that is exactly what Harris proposes – using your tax dollars. She now wants the federal government to pay college students to register as voters. Locally, Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija (D), a member of the vice president’s exclusive voting group, let the cat out of the bag in a recent podcast, when he talked about mobilizing the students to go to “nursing homes” to “serve many people at once.” Who picks the nursing homes? How do we make sure we are reaching people of all political persuasions? Can anyone truly think these constitute altruistic “non-partisan efforts?”

If we must use tax dollars on students, I would rather pay them to work in their college libraries where perhaps they could put down their phones and avail themselves of books on world history. College students might learn about the work of Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany. He channeled Hitler’s own words: “…all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.”

With the constant, incessant drumbeat harping that our taxpayer funds must “remove barriers to the ballot box,” the left banks on the public not realizing that what Democrats are doing is simply adding what they hope are more like-minded voters to their rolls. If their ideas will not win elections, perhaps registering more Democrats will do the trick.

When Democrats start talking about helping people in nursing homes and hospitals to register and vote, Americans should think about whether we want our government officials intruding on our most vulnerable citizens. Anyone who has sat by  a loved one’s bedside in a hospital knows the focus is on treatment and healing.  In the worst scenarios, families gather to say their goodbyes.

Similarly, nursing homes and care facilities keep their residents safe and comfortable, many of whom suffer from diminished mental capacity due to age or infirmity. If those people want to vote and are able to make that decision, they can do so without a taxpayer-funded college student, whom they have never met, intruding on them while they are at their most defenseless. After all, who wants to chat up a college student while in bed with only a hospital gown to protect your modesty? Even worse, being a taxpayer-funded agent of the Biden-Harris administration would give these students the imprimatur of some type of government authority such that our ill and elderly Americans might feel a compulsion to cooperate.

Ronald Reagan famously said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” If he were here today, I am sure he would also add: “…and I am here to register you to vote and retrieve your ballot.”

Ballot harvesting of our most defenseless citizens will likely not be easy to stop in time for this year’s elections. If you see it happening, call the authorities and report it to the administrators of the homes and hospitals. But the real solution is to get these Democrats out of office.

Many people who fail to vote say they were too busy with other responsibilities and just could not find the time. That attitude assures that we will be perpetually in the grip of the left’s lunacy. If Republicans turn out in high enough margins, we accomplish two goals: (1) Diluting leftist tomfoolery and malfeasance; and (2) Electing leadership who will pass laws to make our elections more secure. When Harris draws the Venn diagram of the 2024 elections, I hope all Republicans are in the circle representing voters who responsibly cast their vote to retire the Biden-Harris administration.

Please follow DVJournal on social media: Twitter@DVJournal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal

(From a press release)

The Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office and the Montgomery County Detective Bureau have put measures in place to securethe sanctity of the upcoming general election on Nov. 7,  including an Election Tip Line of 610-292-2023 to when callers can report any suspicious activity around the ballot drop boxes or suspicious activity on Election Day.

Anyone who sees someone attempting to break into the ballot drop boxes, delivering multiple ballots to the boxes, damaging the boxes or otherwise doing something suspicious or criminal is asked to immediately call the Election Tip Line at 610-292-2023.

“We don’t expect any irregularities with the upcoming election, but I want to reassure Montgomery County residents that we will use all means to make certain we have a safe, secure and valid election here in Montgomery County, for both in-person voting on Election Day and for voting by dropping off completed paper ballots,” said First Assistant District Attorney Edward F. McCann Jr. “If the facts and evidence warrant it, we will prosecute anyone who attempts to interfere with this election.”

Spread throughout Montgomery County, the 12 secure ballot drop box locations are available 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., beginning Saturday, Oct. 28, through Nov. 7. They are fully staffed and under video surveillance. Drop boxes are located in Cheltenham, Lansdale, Lower Merion, Norristown (two locations), Pottstown, Royersford, Skippack, Upper Dublin, Upper Frederick, Upper Merion and Upper Moreland. Addresses for secure drop boxes, as well as voting instructions, can be found on the county’s website.

On Election Day, a team of prosecutors and detectives will be available for referral and to respond to complaints. While no irregularities are expected to occur with the election, the team will be ready to assist in protecting the integrity of our electoral system and to make sure that poll workers are safe as well.

May 16 is Municipal Primary Day in Pennsylvania. Voters will head to local precincts to decide which candidates will participate in the 2023 off-year November elections.

While not as high-profile as state and national elections, this year’s contests will let voters decide who controls numerous critical local offices, including school boards and judgeships.

Since the infamous Florida 2000 election, the voting process has itself become political. Pennsylvania has seen a wave of voting reforms in recent years, and it can be hard for the average voter to keep up with the changes.

Here are the most important rules for voters planning to cast their ballots this year in the Delaware Valley and beyond.

Mail-in voting. During the pandemic, Pennsylvania adopted a no-excuses mail-in voting system. Voters may apply for a mail-in ballot and receive one with no questions asked. The deadline to do so for the primary elections is Tuesday, May 9. For the municipal general elections on November 7, it is Oct. 31. 

Kelly Cofrancisco, a spokeswoman for Montgomery County, told DVJournal that the “most notable changes” to mail-in balloting are “the date requirements.”

“Voters must sign & date the Voters Declaration, expressing the date with month, day and year; and use the date of the day they signed the envelope,” Cofrancisco said.

She said the county itself “changed the color of the inner secrecy envelope to yellow” this year in an effort to “cut down on the number of ‘naked’ ballots, as that is the most common reason we reject ballots in our elections.”

“Voters should seal their ballot into the yellow envelope & then insert the yellow envelope into the white envelope,” she said.

In both the primary and the municipal elections this year, county boards of election must receive mail-in ballots by 8:00 p.m. on the election day (May 16 and Nov. 7, respectively).

In addition to directly mailing their ballots to their respective county offices, Delaware Valley voters can also drop off their ballots at numerous drop boxes in the area. Montgomery County, Delaware County, Chester County, and Bucks County have all published locations of their drop box locations.

Except in narrow circumstances involving disabled voters, ballots can only be returned by those casting them. “Ballot harvesting” — collecting ballots on behalf of others and delivering them to voting authorities — is disallowed by Pennsylvania law.

Voter ID. Pennsylvania has a lax voter identification law. Voters do not need to produce photo identification in order to cast their votes and only need to provide any kind of identification in limited circumstances.

The Pennsylvania Department of State stipulates a voter must produce identification only when he or she votes at a precinct for the first time. If they lack a photo ID, voters can use bank statements, utility bills, paychecks, or several other non-photo forms of ID.

After their first visit to a polling station, voters “need not show any identification unless otherwise noted in the poll book,” the state says.

Voters casting a mail-in ballot must provide either a driver’s license number, part of a Social Security number, or one of several forms of photo ID.

Voting times. Polls are open statewide from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., including in the primary election. Voters in line by 8 p.m. should be allowed to cast a ballot.

Who can vote in the primary? Pennsylvania is one of nine states with closed primaries, meaning only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote for candidates during partisan spring elections. (The state allows “all voters” to cast ballots for “constitutional amendments,” “ballot questions,” and “any special election contests held at the same time as a primary election.”)

The Delaware County elections office said on May 16, the 163rd State Representative District will elect a new House Representative while Radnor Township’s 4th Ward (Precincts 1 and 2) will choose a new Township Commissioner. All voters are eligible to participate in these contests.

“In both special elections, voters should be aware that the winning candidates will take office shortly after the election,” the county said. “This is unlike the primary contests, where candidates are seeking the nomination to represent a party on the November ballots.”

The closed primary system may change shortly. State Sens. Lisa Boscola (D-Northampton) and Dan Laughlin (R-Erie) introduced a measure last month to move Pennsylvania to an “open primary” where independents can cast ballots for major party candidates.

Currently, the only option for independents is to register as a major party member before an election. The 15-day deadline for doing so in the May primary has passed, but there’s still plenty of time to change affiliations before the November municipal election.

DelVal voters can review local voting rules information on the Montgomery, Bucks, Chester, and Delaware county websites.

Please follow DVJournal on social media: Twitter@DVJournal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal

Republicans are heading back to court to force Pennsylvania Democrats to follow election law and a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding ballot security.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court backed a Pennsylvania law requiring absentee ballots to be dated before being counted, reversing a 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals Court opinion. Now the Republican Party at the state and national levels is suing to require Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State to abide by the high court’s decision.

Following a joint lawsuit filed Monday against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for planning to illegally accept undated mail-in ballots, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer, and PAGOP Chairman Lawrence Tabas released a statement.

“As the Pennsylvania legislature and U.S. Supreme Court have made clear, undated mail-in ballots should not be counted. Republicans are holding Pennsylvania Democrats accountable for their brazen defiance of the Supreme Court and the rules duly set by the legislature. Pennsylvania Democrats have a history of election integrity failures and Pennsylvanians deserve better: this lawsuit is the latest step in Republican efforts to promote free, fair, and transparent elections in the Keystone State.”

Supporters of the lawsuit point out that practically every legal document must be dated. Moreover, in at least 17 states, absentee ballots are counted after polls close on Election Day. Another 16 states allow counting to begin on Election Day. And then, says J. Christian Adams with the Public Interest Legal Foundation, there is the issue of basic fairness.

“States need to follow their own election rules.  When they don’t, the losers in elections doubt the fairness of the process,” Adams said.

Democrats insist the court’s ruling does not prevent them from counting improperly-cast ballots. Acting Secretary of State Leigh M. Chapman said county elections officials should still count mail-in votes that arrive in exterior envelopes with inaccurate or nonexistent dates, despite a requirement in state law that they must have them.

And former Hillary Clinton attorney Marc Elias, a leading force behind Democratic efforts to block ballot security policies, said that while the Supreme Court may have ruled the 3rd Circuit’s decision moot, “they didn’t say it was wrong.”

As the fight continues in the Keystone State, the high court’s order has a national impact. It sends a message that Democratic activists and their allies in the judiciary cannot just misuse the Materiality Provision of the Voting Rights Act to attack common safeguards. The 3rd Circuit panel tried to use the provision to strike down what should seem the simplest voting requirement.

Republicans argue this case proves Democrats oppose any ballot security measures by labeling them all forms of voter suppression.

When Georgia passed its voter law in 20201, President Joe Biden described it as worse than the racist abuses of the South’s Jim Crow era (“It’s Jim Eagle!”). And he compared U.S. senators who would not kill the filibuster to pass a federal law overriding Georgia’s rules to segregationist Bull Connor and Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

A Gallup poll this month showed 79 percent of voters support voter ID, with big majorities across demographics.

Most voter fraud convictions are related to mail-in ballots—including those tied to a North Carolina congressional race overturned in 2018 after a ballot harvesting scam was uncovered.

Such voting is particularly vulnerable when ballot harvesting is allowed. It is the practice of political operatives or non-governmental actors collecting and distributing massive quantities of absentee ballots. That opens the door to both voter intimidation and ballot tampering.

“Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud,” the 2005 bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission reported. “The practice in some states of allowing candidates or party workers to pick up and deliver absentee ballots should be eliminated.”

The Republicans who brought the lawsuit point out it was the second time in recent weeks that the RNC has brought litigation to remedy this type of issue. The RNC is involved in 71 cases of election integrity litigation in 20 states this cycle, it says.

“Pennsylvania Democrats’ consistent disregard for the election rules set by the legislature has resulted in Pennsylvania being a national election administration laughingstock.”

Please follow DVJournal on social media: Twitter@DVJournal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal

As the midterm election approaches, the Republican National Committee joined other organizations to sue Pennsylvania for what it calls “unfair” voting practices. The suit argues that because various counties handle ballots with mistakes differently, that results in unequal outcomes for voters.

Some counties will fix or “cure” mistakes and count those ballots, while other counties do not.

“A Pennsylvania voter’s ballot should be treated uniformly, no matter where they reside in the commonwealth,” said Philadelphia lawyer Linda A. Kearns. “This lawsuit seeks to correct a glaring disparity – some counties follow the Pennsylvania election code and do not provide voters a second bite at the apple but some counties improperly look at ballots before election day and contact voters and allow them to correct mistakes. This type of uneven treatment of voters can tip the scales unfairly, especially if it only happens in counties where the majority of voters are Democrats.”

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel released a statement supporting the effort.

“The RNC is joining with the NRSC, NRCC, Pennsylvania GOP, and concerned Pennsylvania voters to sue the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for unequal treatment of its citizens at the ballot box,” McDaniel said. “Pennsylvania Democrats, led by Gov. Tom Wolf, are unconstitutionally flouting the law by failing to adopt uniform rules for how elections in the Keystone State are run.

“This lawsuit will ensure that Pennsylvania voters have confidence in their elections and underscores the Republican Party’s commitment to making it easier to vote and harder to cheat in Pennsylvania and nationwide,” she said.

According to the lawsuit, “The court should restore transparency, fundamental fairness, and integrity to Pennsylvania’s elections by upholding the plain text of the election code and the clear holding of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and declaring that county boards of elections may not adopt cure procedures other than as the General Assembly has expressly provided in the election code.”

Also, “Despite the election code’s plain text and the Supreme Court’s clear holding, and the veto by the governor of the bill enacted by the legislature to implement a cure procedure, several boards, without legal authority, have developed and implemented cure procedures for the 2022 general election and beyond. These boards’ development and implementation of cure procedures exceed the boards’ authority under state law and the election code. These boards have, in effect, usurped the exclusive legislative authority of the General Assembly in contravention of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s holding,” it stated.

The Republicans contend “it is the Pennsylvania legislature’s responsibility to uniformly enact these procedures and for them to apply across the state. The U.S. Constitution is clear that state legislatures should set the rules for how elections are run.”

“Gov. Tom Wolf has vetoed and opposed Pennsylvania Republican-led legislation to remedy this issue. Now, a coalition of Republican groups and concerned citizens are stepping in to protect and standardize Pennsylvania elections,” the suit said.

The lawsuit asks the court to issue a permanent injunction to require the boards of election to follow the letter of the law and not to “cure” ballots where voters have made mistakes and then count those ballots

Please follow DVJournal on social media: Twitter@DVJournal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal

One issue that has risen to the top in this election cycle is Pennsylvania Act 77. This act was supported by many Republicans when they agreed to essentially remove any requirement to be able to vote by absentee ballot in exchange for taking away the ability of voters to vote a straight party vote at the flick of one button on election day.

Democrats essentially turned the removal excuses for absentee ballots into the ability to vote by mail in Pennsylvania–no reason required.

State Senators Doug Mastriano and Jake Corman are two of the candidates in the Republican primary for the governor’s race. They have tried to spin this misjudgment by saying Democrats distorted the intentions of Act 77 and gave us the current system that many people believe is much more open to ballot harvesting and election fraud.

In addition to mail-in ballots, Democrats in Pennsylvania approved a drop box system across the state that allows people to deposit ballots that they receive in the mail into secured boxes across the state. The law on this requires that a person may deposit only their own ballot.

On April 4, Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin issued a report that indicated that at least 288 people deposited more than one ballot at five area drop boxes between October 18th and election day, November 2, 2021.

On my radio show, Martin told me that he declined to prosecute anyone because only a few of the 288 people could be identified due to the mask mandate at the time and the poor quality of the video surveillance at the drop box locations. I objected to this approach and told him that much more must be done on this front to ensure that people believe in the results of our elections.

After that conversation, I was pleasantly surprised that my producer was contacted by Martin’s office, and he came on my show to announce three reforms that he was instituting or calling for. First, he wants more precise and prominently placed warnings against depositing more than one ballot to be placed on and around the drop boxes. Second, he wants the drop box at the Lehigh County Government Center to be restricted to “normal” business hours. He wants voters to believe that someone might be watching.

Finally, he will dispatch county detectives in plainclothes to periodically monitor the drop boxes. This last reform has set off some Lehigh County Democratic leaders who say these detectives are intimidating and they have to deduct from their pay for any time spent observing the drop boxes.

I believe this local battle over drop boxes is occurring all over the country and that’s why I watched the debut of Dinesh D’Souza’s new film “2000 Mules,” at an area theater with my listeners. The premise of the film, as presented by D’Souza and True The Vote, is that by using cellphone geo-tracking and surveillance video, they were able to follow a network of “mules “in battleground states collecting ballots from get-out-the-vote outfits and then stuffing them a few at a time in multiple drop boxes, often in the middle of the night.

D’Souza concedes that in Michigan and Wisconsin the “mules” they have observed would not have deposited enough votes to overcome President Joe Biden’s margin of victory. However, he maintains that in Georgia and Arizona, their observations turn up more than enough votes to secure victory for former President Donald Trump in those states.

Incredibly, in Philadelphia alone, he maintains that 1,100 mules averaged 50 drop box visits each giving us 275,000 suspect votes that could have flipped Pennsylvania from Biden to Trump.

The film is well researched and tells the story in great detail. Even if you reject its premise about the numbers of suspect drop box votes, it underlines the need to remove mail-in balloting from our elections or continue to suffer a lack of confidence in election results.

Follow us on social media: Twitter: @DV_Journal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal

Chester County commissioners held a regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday night. But the topic that dominated was not on the agenda. It was confidence in elections.

Frustration over how Chester County handles the voting process began last November following the 2021 municipal elections. The number of residents showing up to voice their discontent has only grown.

Attendees patiently waited in the Henrietta Hankin Branch Library until the general public comment period. Their main demand? A forensic audit of the 2021 general election.

“This is America,” said Cathy Ingham. “We, the people, demand free and fair elections with no fraud.”

Their lack of confidence in the election results stems from reported issues of USBs not properly reporting ballots, bags of votes being discovered late in the counting, and jammed scanners that reportedly sometimes shredded ballots.

“The problem is we had a dishonest election,” William Jack Shipe told the commissioners.

Michael Taylor, solicitor for the Republican Committee of Chester County, was in the counting room during the general election last year and started voicing concerns then. Since November’s outburst of activism, he detailed progress being made with the county.

“Myself, the Democratic solicitor, and a representative from the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania have been sitting down once a month with the county solicitor and voter services staff to go over the problems we have seen, and try to improve the system,” said Taylor.

But those talks have not led many advocating for electoral reforms to be less angry.

“I feel like I’m asking the fox to secure the henhouse because there’s no reaction from [the commissioners] at all,” said Ingham, describing how commissioners gave little response to the demands for a forensic audit.

Taylor said lingering frustration stems from the lack of an audit. Without it, he says a determination cannot be made whether the election was secure or not. That leaves residents frustrated.

While Taylor said he has made some progress on the audit in discussions with interested parties, movement in the Chester County Democratic Committee appears non-existent.

“The request for a forensic audit is nothing more than an attempt to use an audit to overturn duly certified elections,” Democratic Chair Charlotte Valyo told Delaware Valley Journal in a statement.

Despite the disagreement on the audit, Valyo said there has been more bipartisanship in the creation of new processes to secure elections in the county. “These processes further bolstered the already rigorous election protocols and addressed the concerns submitted by the Republican and Democratic parties,” she said.

Some speakers at the commission meeting recounted anecdotes of their troubles voting. Diane Houser was one of them. In the 2020 general election, she voted in person and returned her incomplete mail-in ballot to prove she could do so. But she recently learned her vote was not counted.

“Hey, how many other people did this happen to?” she asked. “My question is, why were our votes not tabulated after our votes were put in the voting machine.”

Many also voiced concerns about mail-in ballots.

“What did the last three elections have in common?” Christopher Manos asked the crowd. “We all went to bed having decisively won these past three elections. And election victory margins were whittled away by the scam commonly known as mail-in balloting.”

A top priority for county Republicans has been education on mail-in ballots. It is important the base understands the process so therefore they can have confidence in it, Taylor told DVJ in November. Since then, Taylor said, progress has been made.

“I’ve been going around to some of our local areas and just talked to them for five or 10 minutes about how the process works and what you can expect,” he said. “That’s been very productive.” As people learn that mail-in ballots get counted later, they realize it’s not about ballots being pumped into the system, Taylor said.

But other concerns remain besides mail-in balloting. Chief among them are drop boxes. The County Republicans would prefer they are eliminated, but if that cannot happen they support adequate surveillance at sites and more security measures to make sure only each person is casting their own vote.

Top of mind is the upcoming primary elections in May. The goal is to avoid another contentious count, Taylor said, and he believes the election is on track to go more smoothly than last November’s contest.

“The new policies that the voter services have put in place [do] offer more protections,” Taylor said. He added since May is a primary election there’s less concern. The plan is to ‘see what happens in May, and then continue to grow on that.’”

And while Taylor was clear he believed the county and other interested parties had been working together in good faith, he also was clear he is not pleased with the current state of play.

“We need to keep working toward protecting the mail-in ballots and following the rule of law,” he said. “I would say it’s a work in progress and I encourage the board of commissioners and all parties involved to continue to work to better the system.”

Follow us on social media: Twitter: @DV_Journal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal

Margie Miller, a Republican, was elected to a seat on the Downingtown Area School Board in November. She was finally sworn in at a meeting on Wednesday, March 2.

The delay was caused by a court challenge by her Democratic opponent, Rebecca Britton, over six ballots.  Last week, the state Supreme Court refused to hear that case. That opened the way for Miller to take her seat on the board.

“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling certified my election, and solidified the fact that the people of Region 4 have spoken,” said Miller. “I am very excited to begin working with the other eight directors on the DASD School Board.

“The trajectory of this election and the fact that I am being seated four months after Election Day underscores the necessity of an audit,” Miller said. “Mail-in ballots serve a legitimate need. Their validity is obviously still very much in question.

“My personal hope is that the chain of events following this past election in the school director race may serve to assist a future election decision. I am honored and humbled to have been elected to serve the people of Region 4 in the Downingtown Area School District.”

Michael Taylor, the solicitor for the Chester County Republicans, said the court’s refusal to take up Britton’s appeal meant Miller was certified as the winner.

Taylor previously said a Commonwealth Court panel of judges had correctly “affirmed the decision of the Chester County Board of Elections to disqualify the six ballots.”

While a recent ruling had three different opinions, a majority of the judges ruled the ballots should be thrown out, he said.

Britton said, “The Supreme Court ruling is disappointing. There are 67 counties in Pennsylvania.  If each county can draw arbitrary conclusions regarding which votes can be counted then our democracy is unprotected and fragile. In this case, we will never know who the six votes were cast for and the courts missed an opportunity to create clarity where the law was open to interpretation. This is not a partisan issue; this is an ‘every voter’ issue.”

She added, “I wish Mrs. Miller well during her tenure representing Region 4.”

Follow us on social media: Twitter: @DV_Journal or Facebook.com/DelawareValleyJournal