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KERNS: Can We Count on You to Protect the Vote in Pennsylvania?  

Almost 250 years ago, Pennsylvania played an indispensable role in the formation of our great union. Our geographic, political, and economic position provided vital support for our newly minted constitutional republic.  Thus, our nickname as the Keystone State became commonplace because a keystone is the central, wedge-shaped stone in an arch that crucially provides architectural integrity. Pennsylvania held the integrity of the new nation together.

Fast forward to 2024 – we continue to be the Keystone State – with unlimited potential due to our unique geography, vast natural resources, multi-cultural residents, and economic diversity.  President Donald J. Trump recognizes our vitality and has spent countless hours here meeting farmers, manufacturers, small business owners, and individuals to hear about our successes – and our concerns. Consistently, one of those concerns is the integrity of our elections.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) and President Trump believe that Pennsylvanians, and all Americans, deserve fair and honest elections, where ballots are cast and counted legally. That is the essence of our fight: for a principled, honest system. We deserve no less.

All across America, the RNC and President Trump fight fervently for the integrity of our elections. The RNC and President Trump developed a comprehensive plan to protect Pennsylvania from interference – but we need your help. We need every patriot in Pennsylvania.  Over the last month, consistent with our long-held positions, we tirelessly promoted commonsense safeguards for mail ballot voting, so Pennsylvanians can cast their ballots with confidence. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania sided with us and the law, blocking efforts by leftist groups and our own Secretary of State Al Schmidt to invalidate the statute that requires voters to date their mail ballots. No one elected Secretary Schmidt – but he took it upon himself to attack the laws passed by the state senators and representatives we Pennsylvanians elected. That sounds like the exact opposite of democracy.  When state county officials refused to enforce election rules for casting mail ballots and sent out ballots prior to completing required testing, we stepped in and called them out to protect voters who likely did not realize that their elected officials were taking shortcuts.

If you give bad government actors an inch, they’ll go a mile. From creating a patchwork of unlawful ballot curing policies that tend to tip the scale against voters who vote Republican, to forgoing comprehensive ballot testing—such violations do nothing but undermine the integrity of our elections and increase voter distrust.

We want voters to have faith in the process so the importance of the work we do leading up to and on Election Day cannot be understated. The collaboration of the Election Integrity departments of the RNC and Trump Campaign is unprecedented – the first ever of its kind. We have put rule breakers on notice, with staff covering every county in Pennsylvania as well as spread across our great nation. We have engaged in record numbers of critical legal battles, with 120 Election Integrity lawsuits to date in 26 states and counting. These legal efforts remain unmatched,  superseding past election cycles.. This is a new Republican party and, along with the Trump Campaign, pursues every legal angle to proactively halt election misdeeds and transgressions and protect you, the voter.

Our boots-on-the-ground operations have exceeded our expectations. Our Protect the Vote initiative has held over 200 live poll watcher trainings in Pennsylvania alone. These numbers increase by the day, because our election integrity operation is the largest and most comprehensive that our party – and our country – has ever seen.

We are dedicated to ensuring a safe and secure election, but we need your help. We need more eyes and ears — to stand alongside us in this fight and protect the vote. Whether you can volunteer for a few hours, or all of election day, join the expansive election integrity team to save Pennsylvania and America. We need poll watchers, poll workers, observers, and volunteer attorneys.  We need you, and we will train you and be by your side every step of the way.

Of course, President Trump and I first ask you to make a plan to vote. With your efforts, we can swamp the vote for Republicans up and down the ballot. Take advantage of mail voting, early in person mail voting, or election day voting—whichever method works best for you, and we will make this election too big to rig.

Once you have your vote plan, we need to protect the vote – it should be easy to vote, and hard to cheat. If left-wing activists would have it their way, they would continue to circumvent the law to compromise this election. That’s why we need you to go to ProtectTheVote.com/Pennsylvania now and sign up today to protect our election.

The battle for our beloved Keystone State takes center stage in President Trump’s efforts to bring America back to  the leadership and prosperity we deserve. Under the current administration, we are a country in decline, susceptible to bad actors who do not have our best interests at heart. We cannot give them another four years.

Democrats have taken election interference to the next level; but with patriots like you, we can be confident in our elections and Make Pennsylvania and America Great Once Again.

 

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GIDLEY: New Bipartisan PA Law Bans ‘Zuckerbucks,’ But Voters Still Vulnerable

It is a politically charged and divisive time in America. So, it’s rare when elected officials from both sides of the aisle come together and agree to enact changes that positively affect the American people.

But the Pennsylvania legislature just did.

It has passed, and Gov. Tom Wolf has signed, a new law that bans private money from being used for elections by state election officials in an unequal, unfair, political manner. Those dollars are commonly known as “Zuckerbucks.”

Voters across the country overwhelmingly want election integrity. Recent Rasmussen polling shows bipartisan support in the 80th percentile for measures like requiring photo I.D., cleaning up voter rolls, and mandating the return of all ballots to election officials by Election Day. That’s not surprising when you consider people on the political right, left, and everywhere in between have been complaining about the election process for decades.

And while the concerns about hanging chads and dimpled ballots of the 2000 presidential election have been replaced by fears about unsolicited mass mail-in ballots and unsecured, unmonitored ballot drop boxes, the American people’s faith, trust, and confidence in the election process are at all-time lows. In fact, only 53 percent are confident that American elections are conducted in a manner that ensures all votes are counted and that the proper winners are declared in each election.

Compelling testimony in Pennsylvania’s legislative committee hearings allowed members to learn about errors from past elections, review raw evidence regarding unequally allocated funds, and—something so few do—listen to the voices of their constituents. Elected officials there realized the need for voter protection measures and decided to act on it.

In response to these positive developments, America First Policy Institute’s Center for Election Integrity (CEI) upgraded Pennsylvania in its online, color-coded, interactive map. The commonwealth that once held a low ranking has now moved up.

CEI grades each state based on four significant election integrity measures: (1) photo identification requirements to vote, (2) returning ballots to election officials by election day, (3) the prohibition of ballot harvesting, and (4) the tiebreaker, banning Zuckerbucks. States are in the red category when few to none of these policies are in place, yellow means some have been implemented, and green states have most or all the policies in place. For a complete methodology regarding the map, click here.

The recent law is a step in the right direction as Pennsylvania has gone from red to yellow on the CEI map. But that does not yet make it a beacon of voter protection. In fact, the state must plug some significant policy holes to emerge as an election integrity leader and restore people’s trust in the election process. Issues widely reported in Delaware County illustrate precisely what must change if the state is to secure its elections better.

Local and national news reports showed in 2020, the county encountered a “wide array of problems with election integrity, including on-tape admissions that the election laws were not complied with, that 80 percent of provisional ballots lacked proper chain-of-custody, that there were missing removable drives for some of the voting machines, and that election workers ‘recreated’ new drives to respond to the Right to Know request.

A whistleblower’s hidden video shows significant interference by people identified as election officials in the county, including one man knowingly asking another person to commit “a felony.” Data there also show voting machines accepted and tallied ballots scanned from other precincts in the county, rendering ballot reconciliation impossible.

While there are obvious documented problems in Delaware County and beyond, they are fixable with good policy.

One of the most important policy measures to help achieve free, fair, and honest elections is requiring government-issued photo identification to vote. It’s supported by 85 percent of Americans because they understand simply proving you are who you say you are when you cast a ballot, helps protect every legal vote and every legal voter.

Some on the left claim this policy will “suppress turnout,” but the data from the 2022 primaries in Georgia shows the exact opposite. In early voting, there was a 168 percent increase from the 2018 gubernatorial primary and a 212 percent jump above the 2020 presidential primary in Georgia.

In 2021, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a bill requiring photo identification to vote; however, the governor vetoed that measure, ignoring 74 percent of Pennsylvanians who support photo identification.

It’s clear the vast majority of Pennsylvanians support election integrity reforms. If their voices are heard and their concerns addressed, the Keystone state will ultimately be a place where it’s easy to vote but hard to cheat.