All Episodes
Previous Next
March 13, 2022 - Epoch Times
21:02
Court Strikes Down ‘No-Excuse’ Mail-In Voting Law, Rules it Unconstitutional in Pennsylvania
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
And now let's begin today's discussion over in Pennsylvania.
Last week, a Commonwealth judge officially struck down the Pennsylvania mail-in voting law, saying that the Pennsylvania Constitution requires voters to cast their ballots in person unless they meet very specific requirements.
Meaning that the no-excuse mail-in voting law was, in actuality, unconstitutional.
Here's specifically what the Commonwealth judge in the case, who for your reference is named Judge Mary Levitt, here's what she wrote in her court order explaining her decision.
Quote,"...no excuse mail-in voting makes the exercise of the franchise more convenient and has been used four times in the history of Pennsylvania.
Approximately 1.38 million voters have expressed their interest in voting by mail permanently.
If presented to the people, a constitutional amendment is likely to be adopted." But a constitutional amendment must be presented to the people before measures like Act 77 can take effect.
Now, right there she mentioned Act 77.
And in case you're not aware, Act 77 was passed in the Pennsylvania legislature and then it was signed into law by Governor Tom Wolf back in the year 2019.
And Act 77, it essentially allows for no-excuse mail-in voting throughout the entire state.
However, what Judge Levitt is arguing here in this court order is that if the general electorate in Pennsylvania wishes to see general no-excuse mail-in voting applied throughout the entire state, well, then they would have to introduce an amendment to their Constitution.
That's because, as it stands right now, Act 77 is in direct contradiction to what it says in the Pennsylvania Constitution.
And for your reference, here's specifically what Article 7, Section 14 of the Pennsylvania Constitution says regarding this matter.
Quote, As you can see, according to the state constitution, according to the state constitution, according to
And so, as you can see, according to the state constitution, there are very strict requirements for who can actually vote by mail.
There are only about five or six scenarios where you can do so.
However, Act 77, it contradicted these requirements.
And given the fact that it was a state statute, well, then naturally it has less legal weight than the actual state constitution.
And so, unless there is an appeal from Governor Tom Wolf, which there likely will be, he will likely appeal this to the state Supreme Court, but until then, the state's elections are not governed by this court order right here.
And so, pending any changes, the upcoming midterm elections over in Pennsylvania, they will not be using no-excuse mail-in ballots.
Although, again, the challenge to this order is coming up soon.
Here's, in fact, what Mr.
Josh Shapiro, he's Pennsylvania's Democrat attorney general, here's what he said in the statement as a reaction to this court ruling.
Quote, This opinion is based on twisted logic and faulty reasoning and is wrong on the law.
It will be immediately appealed and therefore won't have any immediate impact on Pennsylvania's upcoming elections.
However, on the flip side, there were many positive reactions to this ruling as well.
For instance, Mr.
Jake Corman, who is the Pennsylvania Senate President pro tempore, he's a Republican, and he was rather pleased with this court decision.
Here's specifically what he said as part of a statement.
Today's ruling should serve as a call to action to open up a serious conversation about the reforms necessary to make voting both accessible and secure for all Pennsylvanians.
Governor Wolf has ignored this debate for over a year, but hopefully this ruling will help bring him to the table so we can address concerns about our election system once and for all.
And then likewise, President Donald Trump released a statement following this ruling as well, And please note, I had to trim his statement just a little bit in order to comply with the censorship here on YouTube.
Quote...
The practice of no-excuse mail-in ballots put in place by Democrats right before the 2020 election has been ruled unconstitutional by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court.
Here's the key question.
If widespread mail-in balloting is unconstitutional in Pennsylvania now, how could mail-in balloting have been constitutional in the 2020 presidential election then?
Which, regardless of which side of the political aisle you find yourself on, is a legitimate question.
And perhaps after the Pennsylvania governor appeals the decision and we get an actual decision from the state Supreme Court, we will know the answer to that question.
Regardless, though, this whole issue regarding universal mail-in ballots within the state of Pennsylvania is actually part of a broader national context.
Specifically, if you take a look at this map right here on your screen, you can see that more and more states are beginning to conduct their elections, predominantly by mail.
And so the seven states that you see highlighted in dark blue, they automatically send out mail-in ballots to all of their eligible voters, whether they ask for them or not.
Whereas the 25 states that you see marked in yellow, they allow all voters, no matter what, to vote by either absentee or by mail.
But in those states, those voters themselves must request a ballot before it's actually sent to them.
And then the remaining states in gray, which now includes the state of Pennsylvania, they only allow voters who meet specific eligibility criteria to vote by mail.
And so in terms of what the future of elections here in America will look like over, let's say, the next decade, I guess only time will tell.
However, as you saw from that chart, it appears that more and more states are moving towards having mail-in voting.
And so we'll just have to wait and see how it all plays out nationally, as well as how it plays out here in Pennsylvania.
If you'd like to read more about this specific case in Pennsylvania, I'll throw several links about it, including the link to this PDF core decision right here.
It'll all be down there in the description box below.
And all I ask is that you take a super quick moment to smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And now, before we move on over and discuss how a young man is being denied a heart transplant because he's unvaccinated, and then even furthermore, how a toddler is being denied hospital care because his parents are unvaccinated, I would like to take a super quick moment and introduce the sponsor of today's episode.
That's right, Roman.
With the rate of inflation in this country ballooning to, what now, a 40-year high?
With the national debt just crossing the $30 trillion mark a few days ago, and with the supply chains in this country getting stretched almost to the breaking point, with even American truckers saying that they might be forming their own convoy in the next week or two, well, it's becoming more and more the case that people who are preparing for any kind of a future disaster are being seen as virtuous rather than as being paranoid.
And so I would highly recommend that you stock up on emergency food now Rather than wait until your grocery stores are once again empty.
And the best company to utilize for emergency food is My Patriot Supply, which is one of America's largest preparedness companies.
In fact, they have served literally millions of American families who are now prepped and ready for virtually anything.
And they prepared a very special website for our fans.
You can go on over to preparewithroman.com and you can save $50 on their four-week emergency food kit, which will give you breakfasts, lunches, dinners, drinks, as well as snacks for four full weeks.
Now, MyPatriot supplies over 48,000 four- and five-star reviews, so Americans are loving them, and their products are in stock, they ship quickly, and they ship discreetly in unmarked packages directly to your doorstep.
So head on over to preparewithroman.com.
Order your emergency food as well as all the other great products that they have on there.
And as I always say, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
Again, that's preparewithroman.com.
My Patriot Supply.
Thank you so much for sponsoring this episode.
Now, Roman in the studio, back to you.
And now, let's move on over to the city of Boston.
So, in several previous episodes, we have already covered instances of people being denied essential services due to the fact that they were unvaccinated.
For instance, back in October, we discussed how a woman over in the state of Colorado, she was denied a kidney transplant, even though she already found her own private donor, because the woman was not vaccinated.
And as essential as a kidney is to a human body, well, a hospital over in Boston, it decided to take it one step further.
That's right.
Last week, a Boston man was kicked off of the heart transplant list, even though he was already at the very top of that list, because doctors said that he was refusing to get the COVID vaccine.
Now, the man's name is DJ Ferguson, and due to a hereditary heart issue, he has been on the transplant list waiting to get a heart over at Brigham and Women's Hospital over in Boston.
However, as I mentioned just a few moments ago, he was on the list before being kicked off the list for refusing the COVID vaccine.
Here's specifically how Mr.
Ferguson's father explained the situation.
The COVID vaccine is kind of against his basic principles.
He doesn't believe in it.
It's a policy they are enforcing and so because he won't get the shot, they took him off of the list of a heart transplant.
My son has gone to the edge of death to stick to his guns and he's been pushed to the limit.
His father added that even though his son is on the brink of death, he still believes that he is fighting for principles and integrity.
Here's what the father added.
We are aggressively pursuing all options, but we are running out of time.
I think my boy is fighting pretty damn courageously, and he has integrity and principles he really believes in, and that makes me respect him all the more.
It's his body.
It's his choice.
Now, in terms of why specifically the doctors are choosing to pull Mr.
Ferguson from the transplant list, well, a spokesperson for the hospital, they released a statement to the New York Post saying that the hospital maintained certain requirements in order to maximize the chance of survival, given the fact that there are so few organs to go around.
Here's specifically what the hospital spokesperson said in that statement.
We do everything we can to ensure that a patient who receives a transplanted organ has the greatest chance of survival.
Our healthcare system requires several CDC-recommended vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine, and lifestyle behaviors for transplant candidates to create both the best chance for a successful operation and to optimize the patient's survival after transplantation, given that their immune system is drastically suppressed.
Patients are not active on the wait list without this, meaning that they require the COVID vaccine in order to increase the likelihood of survival after transplantation.
However, after all of this went down, Mr. Ferguson's wife set up a GoFundMe campaign and as of this moment, they have raised over $92,000 in order to support the family while Mr. Ferguson is in the hospital.
And on there, she sometimes posts updates on her husband's situation, and in one of those posts, she explained in better detail why exactly her husband is refusing to get the shot.
Here's specifically what she wrote.
The vaccine typically causes swelling in the heart, usually temporary or for most people, no big deal, right?
But in DJ's case, he cannot afford for his heart to swell any more than it already is right now.
Meaning that Mr. Ferguson...
Ferguson now finds himself between a rock and a hard place.
Either take the vaccine and risk heart inflammation, which might kill him, or don't take the vaccine, be pushed off the transplant list, but remain in the hospital.
Here's specifically what his wife wrote on Facebook is his situation at this moment.
At this point, DJ is unable to leave the hospital until he gets the heart surgery he needs.
Without the surgery, his lungs and heart will continue to fill up with blood and fluid on top of everything else that's going on.
And so that is the unfortunate circumstance that Mr.
Ferguson finds himself in.
However, there is something that at least I believe is worth mentioning here, which is that whether you agree with them or not, the Boston Hospital appears to have somewhat of an explanation for why they are denying the transplant.
Again, you don't have to agree with their reasoning, but at least they have a reasoning.
However, let me present to you what's happening right now over in Europe.
Specifically, I'm referencing a case of a three-year-old boy from Cyprus who has a serious heart disease but he was denied treatment in several different countries because his parents were not vaccinated.
Let me just repeat that.
A three-year-old child, a three-year-old toddler from Cyprus, he was denied treatment in the hospitals of several different countries, not because of anything he did, but because his parents were not vaccinated.
Now, this child also needed a heart transplant, just like this young man over in Boston.
However, as reported by Politico, he was turned away from the hospitals in Germany, in Israel, and in the UK. All for the same reason, because his parents had not received the COVID vaccine.
And the way that this actually all played out kind of shows how these policies have run a bit amok.
That's because what happened was that the Cyprus Ministry of Health, they arranged for this child to be sent over to Germany to have this heart transplant.
However, the hospital, it denied the child because, again, his parents had not received the COVID vaccine.
As a response, the boys' parents, they quickly got the vaccine.
They just did not know about this policy.
They didn't think anything of it.
And so, as soon as they heard about it, they got the vaccine.
However, that was not good enough because the hospital informed them that they would not be considered fully vaccinated for another six weeks.
And so they denied him anyway.
And so as a response to that, the Cyprus Health Ministry, they wanted to find a workaround.
And so they suggested that a guardian be sent with a boy rather than his parent.
They would send a guardian, a fully vaccinated guardian, instead of his parents in order to get the heart transplant.
But the German hospital still said no.
The same thing happened over in Israel and the United Kingdom.
But unfortunately, eventually they were able to set up a treatment for him in Cyprus using an Italian hospital.
Now, what's really interesting to note here is that Politico reached out to the European Commission, which I guess you can compare them to the federal government within the EU system, and they confirmed to Politico that there are no policies in place in the EU that will prevent the child from receiving life-saving operation for this reason, meaning that these countries were not breaking the EU law in denying this child treatment.
But this commission also confirmed that there was no blanket policy in place either.
And so instead, it was the local hospitals and the local jurisdictions that can create their own requirements.
And they said that is exactly what happened in this case.
Here's, in fact, specifically what a spokesperson for the European Commission, specifically the health department of the European Commission, here's what he or she told Politico, quote, health policies, including vaccination policies and their concrete implementation are the responsibility of the member states, not the commission.
And as you can imagine, the boy's father was bewildered by this entire situation, as I'm sure many people who are reading it themselves also are.
Here specifically what the boy's father told Politico, quote,"...I know that unvaccinated patients are admitted to hospitals in Germany.
I didn't know that I had to be vaccinated for my child to be operated on in that hospital.
If I knew it, of course I would have done it.
I'm healthy and did not want to be vaccinated.
I find it inappropriate for someone who is healthy to be vaccinated." And so that is exactly the types of situations that we're beginning to see play out, not only in Europe, but as we mentioned earlier in this segment, here in America as well.
Regardless, let's head on back to the studio.
If you'd like to read more about either what's happening over in Boston or with this young boy over in Europe, I'll throw the links to several articles into the description box below this video for you to check out.
And all that's going to return is that you take a super quick moment to smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And now, let's change gears just a little bit.
While I was down in Texas, I took the unique opportunity to sit down and speak with Mr.
Matt Brainerd, who is the executive director of Look Ahead America, and we discussed the deeper implications of what it actually means to have January 6th prisoners remain in solitary confinement for months on end.
Take a listen.
We actually met at an event in New York, the event centered around the political prisoners who are in the capital D.C. prison system right now, who are in solitary confinement and have been in there since, some of them since January 6th.
Can you kind of set the stage for us and tell us a bit about that?
Sure.
A look ahead, America's been leading the fight on this going all the way back to January when we sent a letter to the Department of Justice and FBI Demanding that they drop all charges against non-violent people who were arrested after the January 6th rally at the Capitol.
And we didn't let it go with just a letter.
We organized a rally in front of the Department of Justice and around the corner from the FBI about a month ago.
And a week from today, on Saturday, we're going to organize another rally at the prison where many of these people are being held in D.C., as well as about 10 satellite rallies all around the country.
There are really three categories of people we're protesting for.
Number one is about 500 or so folks have had their lives turned upside down by the FBI and the Department of Justice.
They're going bankrupt to pay for attorneys.
They're losing their jobs.
All kinds of calamities are befalling them because they're being targeted for, say, walking into the Capitol building, no idea they did anything wrong, and then walking out, not burning anything, not destroying anything, not looting anything.
Then there are a couple of hundred people who are being held in prison by the Department of Justice with No opportunity for bail.
In some cases, not even yet facing charges without access to the evidence of the Department of Justice's Union to prosecute them.
And they've been there for six months.
And typically, anyone that had been charged with anything remotely close to what they'd done would be bailed out.
I mean, every night we have Antifa destroying federal property in Portland, and they're being bailed out the next day.
These people have been sitting in prison for six months without the opportunity to be bailed, and in some cases, without even having charges.
And finally, Ashley Babbitt.
What happened to her is deserving, at the very least, of an investigation to determine who did that and what the reasoning was and whether or not it was justified.
So going back to the people who have been in prison, so you said there's hundreds of people.
And I've heard other people say there's 50 people.
I've heard other people say there's 60 people.
Do you know how many people are in prison and how many people are in solitary confinement?
We believe it's approximately 200.
There are about 60 to 100 being held at the facility in D.C., There's another facility in Oklahoma where a large number are being held, and there's also facilities throughout the country which have smaller numbers.
It's very hard, actually, to track this information down, believe it or not.
And we've been doing our best.
We actually were able to index all of the attorneys for all of the defendants so far, and many of these individuals have had trouble getting attorneys.
Lawyers don't want to represent them, or in some cases we found lawyers do want to represent them, but their firm will not allow them to because they don't want the optics of it.
Now, this is a country...
That sent and celebrated lawyers going pro bono down to Guantanamo Bay to represent terrorists who tried to kill our soldiers.
Have they been in prison for the last, or in jail for the last six months?
Or is it kind of staggered, like some were arrested on January 6th, some were arrested the next month, next month?
Is it like that?
Well, in many cases, the individuals who are being targeted for arrest, some of them have been in prison for six months.
It's like the shaman who's now suffering greatly from a psychological distress from being incarcerated, somebody who has a totally clean record.
Other individuals with military backgrounds, military veterans, have been held for six months or longer since they were picked up on January 6th.
So, you know, and over and over again they're being denied bail.
And they're not being given access to the evidence that's against them.
And the Department of Justice now wants $1.5 billion to build a database of all their evidence to prosecute these individuals.
It's really out of hand.
And we're glad to be standing up for these people, but we wish there were more people alongside us.
What would you tell somebody who's watching this program and thinking, well, you know, those people, maybe they follow the mainstream narrative, they really think of them as insurrectionists, and they, as domestic terrorists, you know, as a lot of the classification has been, although I don't believe they're officially charged with insurrection, but regardless, that's the media narrative.
What would you tell them if they're watching this and thinking, well, it's okay for them to have been arrested for this long, they essentially, you know, try to overtake America or something like that?
I think that if anybody, given where we are right now, believes that, they're They're so stupid that they're beyond my reach.
I'm interested in the people who look at this and see an injustice, but do not know what to do about it.
They're angry, they're upset about it, but they don't have a positive avenue to release that anger and that upset.
Look Ahead America is that opportunity.
We will put you to work.
We will take your time, your talent, or your treasure and deploy it on behalf of the America First agenda.
Not just with this political prisoner situation, But across many other fights like voter integrity and corporate censorship and CRT. So we need help.
And if you've never been involved before and you finally are upset enough, you're finally motivated to do something, sign up to volunteer with us.
Sign up to either go into the field being a volunteer on the street force registering voters or helping organize these protests or doing internet research for us on voter fraud.
Or make a contribution.
You've got to get involved somehow, and you don't have an excuse not to anymore.
Now, it is worth noting that that was not the full interview.
If you would like to watch that interview in its entirety, as well as a plethora of other phenomenal content, including an exclusive interview with President Trump, which we will be publishing on Monday, you can do so over on Epic TV, which is our awesome no-censorship video platform.
And actually, we are right now running a great promotion where you can get full access to everything for just a single dollar.
I'll throw a link to it.
It'll be right there at the very top of the description box.
I hope you click on it.
I hope you check it out.
I hope you subscribe to Epic TV and join us on this journey of exploring this beautiful, beautiful world through honest journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
Now lastly, if you haven't already, smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Subscribe to this YouTube channel if you haven't already in order to get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed while YouTube still allows it.
Also consider hitting that notification bell so you can actually be notified of any new videos as we release them.
And then lastly, if you happen to have a Telegram account, consider following us at FactsMatter underscore Roman.
We'll publish the links to all of our episodes there, so if anything ever does happen here on YouTube, you can always find us on Telegram.
And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
▲
Export Selection