The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday ruled for the Republican National Committee, holding that undated mail-in ballots may not be counted.
Read the full story
The majority of mail-in ballots requested in Pennsylvania have been returned as of 8 a.m. Monday.
Of the 2.2 million issued, the Department of State is in receipt of 1.8 million, or 81.4%, according to its daily report. By party, Democrats have mailed in 83.1% of the 1.2 million requested; Republicans 82.1% out of 715,287; and unaffiliated or other third parties at 72.7% out of 282,162.
Read the full story
Data published by the Tennessee Secretary of State’s Office shows that total voter turnout during the 14-day period of early voting in Tennessee for the November 5 general election was lower than the turnout for early voting in the 2020 general election.
According to the data, 2,280,767 ballots—2,070,339 of which were early-in-person ballots and 210,428 absentee ballots—were recorded during the fourteen days of early voting in 2020.
Read the full story
The Nevada Supreme Court ruled on Monday that mail-in ballots received up to three days after Election Day without a postmark must be counted, rejecting a Republican challenge.
State law requiring mail-in ballots to be counted even with a postmark that “cannot be determined” applies to mail-in ballots that do not have postmarks at all, the state Supreme Court decided.
Read the full story
Phill Kline, former Kansas Attorney General and current law professor at Liberty University School of Law, detailed the tactics the Left may deploy on Election Day to commit fraud and ensure a victory for Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democratic candidates.
Kline said tactics to influence election results have been underway long before this year’s general election, including President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order permitting federal agencies to promote voter registration and participation in U.S. elections.
Read the full story
While there are dozens of ongoing election integrity issues, a newly released report from a watchdog group lists the top 50 election threats that the U.S. is facing with less than three weeks until the presidential election.
Election integrity has has a spotlight shined on it since the contentious aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and although some states have made improvements, many issues still remain.
Read the full story
The City of Philadelphia confirmed on Wednesday that it will use new machines to process mail-in ballots on Election Day, according to a new report. The city will now use the same equipment used in Pittsburgh.
Public records reported Wednesday by Spotlight PA show the City of Philadelphia purchased four Omation Model 306 Envelopener Letter Opener devices, which an industry website claims is capable of opening 40,000 envelopes per hour.
Read the full story
Michigan’s top election official, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, is the subject of a bar complaint over her department’s actions to keep independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name on the ballot.
State Sen. Ruth Johnson, a Republican who immediately preceded Benson as secretary of state, filed the bar complaint alleging that Benson manipulated procedures to undermine the Nov. 5 election.
Read the full story
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has dismissed the Republican National Committee’s lawsuit over mail-in ballot curing, ruling that the GOP filed it too close to the November election.
The commonwealth’s highest court made its decision on Saturday regarding the RNC’s case on mail-in ballot notice and cure procedures, Reuters reported. Ballot curing is when voters are allowed to fix any issues with their mail-in ballots.
Read the full story
The Pennsylvania Department of State on Tuesday warned voters the supplied envelope to return their mail-in ballots may arrive sealed from the humidity affecting much of the commonwealth.
In a statement posted to social media, the department confirmed reports that citizens have received mail-in ballots with sealed return envelopes.
Read the full story
Many states are now sending out mail-in ballots for the November election.
Yet at the same time that so many more voters are depending on the mail to cast their ballots, the two leading national organizations of election officials wrote the U.S. Postal Service demanding immediate action to avoid confusion and chaos with mail-in ballots.
Read the full story
A judge on Friday tossed the lawsuit filed by two Pennsylvania voters against the Butler County Board of Elections, granting a victory to Republicans who intervened in the case to argue allowing the request would block “a crucial function in protecting election integrity” this November.
Petitioners requested mail-in voters be allowed to “cure” ballots that were submitted without a security envelope after their ballots were tossed during the 2024 primary elections.
Read the full story
Election-integrity policies are increasing gaining mainstream appeal and acceptance, despite Democrats opposing them under their repeated claim that they are only part of right-wing falsehoods.
From preventing non-citizen voting in U.S. elections to voter ID, Democrats have largely opposed a wide range of election integrity policies that a majority of Americans believe are necessary for the security of elections.
Read the full story
The Republican National Committee (RNC) and Republican Party of Pennsylvania (PAGOP) have filed to intervene in a Butler County lawsuit brought by two voters who want to enable the curing of mail-in ballots returned to election officials without a security sleeve.
The lawsuit was brought by two Pennsylvania voters who submitted mail-in ballots without the required security sleeve. According to their lawsuit, the voters apparently later sought to cure their ballots, but were instead allowed to cast provisional ballots that were ultimately not counted. They filed suit against the Butler County Board of Elections on April 29.
Read the full story
Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Colette McEachin reportedly encouraged voters on Wednesday to consider delivering their 2024 mail-in ballots directly to a post office as the United States Postal Service (USPS) continues to suffer unexplained delays and disappearances of mail.
McEachin made the remarks to 6 News Richmond when discussing a new investigation into the USPS issues in Richmond. She was asked about the mail-in ballots after suggesting the problems with mail delivery could be placed highly within the postal service.
Read the full story
Election officials throughout the country are allegedly planning methods for counting the votes faster in 2024 than they did in 2020, where many days of delay led to confusion, chaos, and credible widespread accusations of voter fraud.
According to Politico, several of the handful of key swing states have passed laws to implement methods for quicker counting and tabulation of the votes. Secretaries of state in those same states are also taking a more active role in overseeing the elections.
Read the full story
The disbarment trial of former President Donald Trump’s previous attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, wrapped up on Friday, the 33rd day. California Bar Disciplinary Judge Yvette Roland found him “culpable” on Thursday and gave his attorneys and the State Bar of California until November 22 to submit written closing statements.
The parties presented aggravating and mitigating testimony on Thursday and Friday, which Roland will use to consider whether to fully disbar Eastman.
Read the full story
Tyler Bowyer, an executive for conservative activist group Turning Point Action, revealed on Monday that he received two Maricopa County ballots for former residents of his home. He told The Arizona Sun Times the episode represented “horrible public policy” and “administration of our elections.”
Bowyer posted an image of four ballots to X, formerly Twitter, on Monday night, revealing that only two registered voters live at his address. Voters in Maricopa County, and much of Arizona, are required to use mail-in ballots for the November 7, 2023 elections.
Read the full story
Gina Swoboda, executive director of Phoenix-based Voter Reference Foundation (VRF) discussed election problems and what to do about them recently on the Jenny Beth Show. Jenny Beth Martin was an early leader in the Tea Party movement as co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. In this third part of a three-part series from the interview, Swoboda delved deeper into the problems that occurred during the 2022 election, many which were caused or exacerbated by election officials, and the hurdles to fixing them.
She observed that switching from precinct voting to vote centers did not increase turnout as election officials claimed it would, which they did in order to convince voters the switch would be beneficial. Republican legislators ran bills that would have made precinct voting easier, she said, like holding voting on a school holiday so the schools could be used as voting locations, but the bills were unsuccessful.
Read the full story
Runbeck Election Services (RES) confirmed this week that Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma’s (R-Peoria) brother, Mihai Toma, purchased a majority stake in the company on August 18.
RES is the private company that processes Maricopa County’s mail-in ballots.
Read the full story
Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby, who attempted to conduct a hand count of ballots during the 2022 election and delayed the certification of election results, filed a lawsuit with another Arizonan, David Mast, against numerous Arizona officials challenging the results of the election. The lawsuit cited lawbreaking regarding signature verification on mail-in ballots, asserting that the violations resulted in “hundreds of thousands of illegal votes in all statewide results for the 2022 General Election.”
Read the full story
Pennsylvania’s Senate State Government Committee on Monday recommended confirming secretary of the commonwealth nominee Al Schmidt.
The panel voted 10-1 to back the Republican acting secretary and former Philadelphia city commissioner. In a subsequent, off-the-floor meeting, the committee approved a bill to facilitate removal of Pennsylvania from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a controversial multi-state data-sharing program supporters say helps states maintain accurate voter rolls. The bill would permit the state to use the Social Security death database and change-of-address records to identify voter-registry errors.
Read the full story
As the Biden administration goes about the legally suspect quest of federalizing get-out-the-vote efforts, more than a dozen U.S. senators are asking for an accounting of the “Promoting Access to Voting” campaign.
U.S. Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Bill Haggerty (R-TN) are among the 14 Republican senators who sent a letter to Biden requesting full transparency on Executive Order 14019, which directs federal agencies to submit strategic plans to the White House describing how they will use taxpayer-funded resources to “provide access to voter registration services and vote-by-mail ballot applications.”
Read the full story
Election issues continue in Orange County, Fla., where, a whistleblower alleges, felons illegally voted, deceased voters requested and received mail-in ballots, voter addresses are changed without the voters requesting it, and multiple ballots are allowed to be dropped off without question.
In a new affidavit filed with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), Brian Freid, a whistleblower in the Orange County Supervisor of Elections (SOE) office, alleges that since the SOE was notified last year by the state’s Office of Election Crimes and Security that felons illegally voted in the county in the 2020 election, there have been “no apparent changes implemented … to effectively ensure this does not happen again in the future.”
Read the full story
A Pennsylvania state senator this week announced he will soon reintroduce legislation he proposed last session to end use of election drop boxes and satellite offices.
In a memorandum asking colleagues to cosponsor his bill, Senator Cris Dush (R-Bellefonte) characterized drop boxes where voters can deposit absentee ballots as fraught with security problems. Lawmakers never enacted a law authorizing counties to set up the receptacles, but the commonwealth’s Democrat-controlled executive branch issued guidance to counties in 2020 permitting drop boxes’ usage.
Read the full story
According to research by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), more than 10.8 million mail-in ballots “disappeared” in California’s midterm elections last year.
California election officials mailed more than 22.1 million ballots to registered voters, but 10.8 million “disappeared.”
Read the full story
Pennsylvania just completed its third year of no-excuse mail-in voting, with Democrats scoring major victories in statewide and legislative offices. According to a political strategist from the state’s southeast, one factor affecting the Democrats’ 2022 success was its engagement in a legal form of “ballot harvesting” in the suburbs west of Philadelphia.
Athan Koutsiouroumbas, a managing director of the Harrisburg-based consultancy Long Nyquist and Associates, refers in a Monday commentary for RealClearPennsylvania to Democrats’ efforts to encourage mail-in voting in Delaware County. He called the effort a “completely legal ballot-harvesting juggernaut.”
Read the full story
In a 180-degree turn, Republicans are adopting the Democratic strategy for winning elections in states where mail-in voting, ballot curing and ballot harvesting are legal.
Republicans have repeatedly sounded the alarm over universal mail-in voting, ballot curing, and ballot harvesting because of the heightened possibility for fraud, but as Democrats have used these methods to help their candidates win elections, the GOP is belatedly accepting that they must play the same game.
Read the full story
Days before the 2022 midterm elections, Pennsylvania Republican Senate leaders wrote to their commonwealth’s chief voting overseer seeking assurance that laws governing undated absentee ballots will be followed.
The letter from Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward (R-Greensburg) and Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman (R-Bellefonte) goes on to urge acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman (D) to follow official procedure on other electoral matters as well.
Read the full story
Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court this week ordered counties to decline to count any absentee or mail-in ballot delivered in an undated envelope.
State law, which has permitted no-excuse absentee voting since 2020, requires those not voting in person to place their ballot into a secrecy envelope before placing it into a return envelope. Voter must sign and date that outer envelope for their ballot to be valid under state statute.
Read the full story
A Wisconsin judge has rejected a request from the state’s League of Women Voters to allow election officials to count absentee ballots with incomplete witness addresses.
Dane County Circuit Judge Nia Trammell on Wednesday said the group’s request for a temporary injunction “would upend the status quo and not preserve it” and “frustrate the electoral process by causing confusion” less than two weeks before Election Day, CBS News reported.
Read the full story
Pennsylvania’s Republican Party and its national counterpart filed a lawsuit this week to prevent the state’s Democrat-run executive branch from requiring counties to count undated absentee ballots.
A lawsuit that originated in 2021 to settle a dispute about whether such ballots should be tallied resulted in the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals answering in the affirmative this June. That ruling decided a race for Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas in favor of Democrat Zachary Cohen over Republican David Ritter.
Read the full story
Pennsylvania’s expansion of mail-in voting in 2019 has left some ambiguity about which ballots get counted, and state Republicans are requesting clarity from the Department of State over the matter.
While Republicans point to a recent federal ruling, the Department cites a state ruling to deny changing its current guidance.
Read the full story
The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a lower federal court’s decision Tuesday allowing Pennsylvania counties to count undated mail-in ballots.
The case originated in 2021 after Republican David Ritter and Democrat Zachary Cohen vied for a judgeship on the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas and their race came to a near tie. Cohen eventually netted a five-vote lead when the Philadelphia-based Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals resolved a dispute between the candidates about whether to count 257 absentee ballots. Those sheets were returned in envelopes on which the voter failed to write a date.
Read the full story
More than two dozen Baltimore voters received their 2020 election ballots earlier this month after the U.S. Postal Service discovered a tray of undelivered mail nearly two years too late.
The Baltimore City Board of Elections is working to figure out why the ballots were delivered late. President Biden won the heavily-Democrat city by a landslide – about eight votes to every ballot cast for then-President Trump.
Read the full story
Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court on Friday ordered three counties that declined to count undated absentee ballots to count them.
Republican Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer issued the ruling affecting Berks, Fayette and Lancaster counties. Last month, Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman (D) sued the three jurisdictions to compel them to include votes delivered in undated envelopes in their May 17 primary results.
Read the full story
This week’s decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upholding Act 77 which legalized no-excuse absentee voting in the Keystone State is spurring Republican lawmakers to renew their push for election reform.
A Republican-led legislature passed and Democratic Governor Tom Wolf signed Act 77 three years ago. Moderate Democratic Senator Lisa Boscola (D-Bethlehem) initially drafted the bill to get rid of straight-party voting, a policy on which Republican legislators largely agreed with her. More Democrats came around to support the measure once a section was added allowing voters to cast mail-in ballots without providing a reason they could not come to the polls (i.e., illness, injury or travel).
Read the full story
Pennsylvania’s Department of State this week filed a lawsuit against three counties, all controlled by Republicans, to count undated absentee ballots.
Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman (D) wants Berks, Fayette and Lancaster counties to follow the rest of the state in counting votes delivered in undated envelopes toward the official tallies for candidates nominated in May 17’s primaries. A Pennsylvania law requiring absentee and mail-in voters to date their ballot envelope has underwent significant court scrutiny over the last two years.
Read the full story
Arizona State Senator J.D. Mesnard (R-Chandler) spoke with The Arizona Sun Times about the effect SB 1632 – a newly-signed bill he sponsored – may have on the perception of mail-in voting. The measure aims to provide onsite tabulation for early ballots.
“I think the issues, the oppositions, the concerns surrounding mail-in ballots are wide and vast and that this [law] may help mitigate some of it, but those issues are much more fundamental.
Read the full story
Pennsylvania’s state Senate passed legislation this week that would permit a Pennsylvania voter to serve as a poll watcher in an election precinct outside of his or her county.
Current law lets candidates and parties appoint poll watchers — volunteers who are often party committee members — to election precincts only in those watchers’ respective counties. State guidance allows these appointees to “make good-faith challenges” to an elector’s residence, identity or voting eligibility.
Read the full story
Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill (D) on Friday issued an opinion regarding a new statute that expands absentee voting, emphasizing that voters need not themselves be sick or away all day to vote by mail.
Merrill said she issued the interpretation to “more closely conform” the law, which Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed on April 8, to Article Sixth, Section 7 of the Connecticut Constitution which states, “In all elections of officers of the state, or members of the General Assembly, the votes of the electors shall be by ballot.”
Read the full story
Attorneys for Senate candidate Dave McCormick on Monday found themselves in the atypical position of arguing in Commonwealth Court alongside Pennsylvania’s Democratic Secretary of State about which ballots to count.
The Republican and former hedge-fund executive is challenging the vote-counting standard that has determined the gap of 922 votes between him and his leading primary opponent, celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz.
Read the full story
The Republican National Committee joined Pennsylvania’s Republican Party this week in a legal effort to effectively help Mehmet Oz sew up last Tuesday’s Senate primary election battle against rival Dave McCormick.
As of Tuesday afternoon, McCormick is 982 votes behind the celebrity surgeon, though vote counting hasn’t concluded. Tuesday marked the final day that absentee military ballots could arrive at their respective counties and still get counted. What impact those final military votes will have on the race remains to be seen, though it bears observing that McCormick himself served in the U.S. Army and noted that fact well throughout his campaign.
Read the full story
The determination of Pennsylvania’s unsettled Republican Senate nomination battle between Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick could depend on a federal court decision regarding undated mail-in ballots.
As of Sunday afternoon, Oz held 418,535 votes to McCormick’s 417,465, putting the former ahead by far less than the 0.5 percent maximum gap that triggers an automatic recount. While over 99 percent of all ballots cast in the election have been counted, an ongoing dispute about whether undated absentee ballots should be deemed valid has the potential to erase Oz’s lead.
Read the full story
Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Gina Swoboda, the executive director of the Phoenix-based Voter Reference Foundation. The foundation, founded by Doug Truax, posts the voter rolls from the states, with the goal of having the rolls from all 50 states posted–consistent with the 1993 Motor Voter law.
Read the full story
Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg) announced on Thursday he intends to draft legislation creating an Office of Election Crimes and Security.
The new division within the Pennsylvania Department of State would be charged with probing all alleged violations of voting laws. The proposed bill also targets “ballot harvesting,” the illegal practice of hand-delivering absentee ballots — usually by depositing them in election drop boxes — on behalf of voters other than oneself. Currently, state law treats ballot harvesting as a misdemeanor; Mastriano’s measure would make it a third-degree felony.
Read the full story
Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore and gubernatorial candidate Jake Corman (R-Bellefonte) appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room Thursday to discuss his proposed reforms to make elections more secure in his state.
Corman promised to call for a special legislative session on election-related legislation the day he takes office. Items he said he intends to address foremost are requiring identification of all voters, rescinding a state policy allowing people to vote by mail without submitting an excuse, banning absentee-ballot drop boxes and banning the use of private grants for election administration.
Read the full story
Pennsylvania Republican Senators this week celebrated their chamber’s passage of two pieces of election-security legislation.
One bill, sponsored by state Sen. Cris Dush (R-Wellsboro), would prohibit the use of drop boxes to collect mail-in and absentee ballots. The other, sponsored by Sens. Lisa Baker (R-Dallas) and Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-Jacobus), would bar state or county employees from approving the use of private donations to fund election administration.
Read the full story
Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks show, host Fredericks welcomed President Donald Trump to the show to weigh in on Dr. Oz, David Perdue, and the disaster of Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp.
Read the full story
Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Crime Prevention and Research Center President Dr. John Lott to the newsmaker line to discuss his latest formula for detecting fraud in the 2020 election and how to fix it going forward.
Read the full story