Pennsylvania County Election Board Rejects Hundreds of Challenges to Mail-in Ballots
The Chester County Board of Elections in Pennsylvania unanimously rejected more than 200 right-wing challenges to mail-in ballot applications during a hearing on Friday.
After the hearing, the ACLU of Pennsylvania released a statement, explaining that Diane Houser, a challenger present at the hearing, is an “election denier activist” and her arguments were “full of inaccuracies and misunderstandings of the law.”
Over 30 lawsuits aimed at restricting vote by mail have been filed this cycle.
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During the hearing, Houser testified that a right-wing group, PA Fair Elections — which filed an anti-voting lawsuit targeting military and overseas voters last year — was behind the challenges. The group sent anonymous letters to numerous voters across the state encouraging them to cancel their voter registrations because they were not eligible.
“The election deniers made serious but spurious allegations against eligible voters who have every right to vote in Pennsylvania,” said Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “They inflicted anxiety on these eligible voters, and they stole precious time from elections officials trying to prepare for a big day.”
The challengers relied on data from the U.S. Postal Service to substantiate their claims, pulling the names of voters who changed their forwarding address through the Postal Service, which they argued meant they could also be registered in and possibly vote in another state.
“Mail forwarding is not a basis for establishing residency for voting, and voters can be registered in more than one place under federal law, as long as they only vote in one location,” the ACLU of Pennsylvania said in a statement. “It is common for voters to have duplicate registrations as a result of moving or temporary relocations.”
Walczak explained that many of the challenged voters, like members of the military or college students, are eligible to vote in the 2024 election in Pennsylvania.
One of the voters impacted by these challenges is Ana Harley, the spouse of an active-duty member of the U.S. Navy. During the hearing, she explained that she and her husband must relocate every three years due to his service, but she is currently a permanent resident of Pennsylvania and is eligible to vote.
“We are days away from the election, and I’m here, in person, because I feel obligated to speak out against unsubstantiated allegations by a ‘concerned’ citizen who does not know me,” Harley said.
Right before he called the vote to deny the voter challenges, Josh Maxwell, the chair of the Chester County Commissioners, expressed how disturbed he was by the statewide campaign convincing eligible voters to cancel their registrations.
“That is alarming to me, that someone can take such an approach to disenfranchise legitimate Pennsylvania voters,” Maxwell said. “I can’t think of anything less American than that.”
Chester County’s election board members made it clear that they oppose mass voter challenges, especially ones without concrete evidence. The county is part of a crucial swing state in this upcoming election, and because the presidential race is projected to be so close, there will likely be a barrage of voter challenges after the election too in Pennsylvania.
Watch the first part of Friday’s hearing here.