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Oct. 29, 2022 - Epoch Times
14:07
After Sending 250,000 Ballots to Unverified Voters, Pennsylvania Now Warns Of Delays Counting Votes
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This right here is the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
It also happens to be one of the major battleground states in the upcoming midterm elections, meaning that the election in Pennsylvania might actually determine which of the two parties controls the Senate for the next four years.
However, despite the obvious importance of this upcoming election, and despite the large national focus on the topic of election integrity, well, several days ago, the Pennsylvania Department of State released official data which showed something truly surprising.
How surprising?
Well, it turns out that election officials throughout the entire state have sent out an astounding 250,000 ballots to voters with unverified IDs.
You heard that correctly.
According to Pennsylvania's own state data, which you can find online for yourself, more than 250,000 mail-in ballots have been sent to the homes of voters without their identities having first been verified.
Now, in order to get an idea of how this could have happened, as well as the significance of what this will actually mean for the upcoming election process, well, let's go through this letter right here.
It was written three days ago.
It was co-signed by 15 Republican state lawmakers, and it was addressed to the top election official within the state, demanding answers.
Here's how the letter begins.
Due to the 2018 directive from your office instructing counties to register voters without verification of identity, the need to verify the identity and eligibility of male and absentee ballot applicants is even more critical to the integrity of our elections.
Now, just to pause here for a super quick moment, what they mentioned here is indeed the case.
And it has created within the state of Pennsylvania for the past four years now, you can kind of say a strange situation.
Because as they mentioned, since the year 2018, in order for someone to register to vote, they technically did not need ID verification.
Counties, as they mentioned, were instructed to register people to vote without requiring verification of ID. However, in order to vote by mail, you do need ID verification.
And so already you can see the problem.
Because if you have a large group of people who register to vote without first verifying their identity, and then those people are sent mail-in ballots, well, how do you verify the identities of those people who vote by mail?
If it's even possible, it would very obviously be a long and tedious process.
Yet, despite that reality, well, here's what the letter notes.
Now, since October 21st, in the past week or so, that number has actually increased to over 250,000 unverified ballots.
And so, let's examine the three obvious questions here.
One, how could this have possibly happened?
Two, what does it mean going forward?
And three, why haven't you smashed that like button yet?
Although, that last one is a trick question because I'm sure that you already have.
Now, to get to the first question regarding how this could have actually happened, let's read what the letter states took place Back in September during a government committee hearing.
For your reference, this was a hearing where Representative Francis Ryan, he's a Republican, and he was questioning Mr.
Jonathan Marks, who is Pennsylvania's Deputy Secretary for elections.
And here's how that exchange went.
During the state government committee hearing on September 14, 2022, Representative Ryan asked Deputy Secretary Marks to explain the large number of requests submitted to the Social Security Administration's Help America Vote verification system.
Marx testified that the Help America Vote verification system is being used to verify the last four digits of Social Security numbers for mail ballot applications.
He then went on to testify that if a person submits an invalid driver's license ID number or an invalid last four digits of their Social Security number, the counties must still send a mail ballot to the requester who provided invalid identification.
And so you see what's happening here.
In the state of Pennsylvania, The top election official, he gave guidance to all the counties such that if a person came in and registered to vote with a driver's license number or a social security number that wasn't correct, well the county would still send that person a mail-in ballot, even though he or she provided invalid identification.
Now, because that sounds almost too crazy to be real, let me read you the exact quote from Mr.
Jonathan Marks, Pennsylvania Secretary for Elections, during that committee hearing on September the 14th.
I want to make sure we're clear about the distinction between the two processes.
For voter registration, there is no federal requirement or state requirement that those numbers match or that every voter has to have one of those two numbers.
With mail-in balloting, it is a requirement.
If, when you apply, your driver's license number cannot be verified or Or your last four social security digits cannot be verified, the county can still issue the ballot.
But the ballot doesn't count unless the voter provides a valid form of ID, either a driver's license number or the last four digits of their social security number that can be verified or one of the other forms of identification provided for in the statute.
And so, likely because this was the guidance issued to the different counties by Pennsylvania's top election official, what wound up happening is that they mailed over 250,000 ballots to voters who never properly verified their identity.
However, here the story actually takes a weird turn, because that statement that we just read from Mr.
Jonathan Marks, it was issued on September the 14th.
However, on September 26th, which is just 12 days after he made that statement, well, the Pennsylvania Department of State, they issued guidance which directly contradicted what Mr.
Marks said.
Specifically, the guidance that they issued said that verification of who a voter is must happen before a state sends them a mail-in ballot.
For your reference, here was specifically the guidance that was issued by the State Department.
Quote, Before sending the ballot to the applicant, the county board of elections must confirm the qualifications of the applicant by verifying the proof of identification And so, obviously, there is a contradiction here.
Because on the one hand, you have one of the highest election officials within the state admitting to the state legislature that ballots are, in fact, being mailed out to unverified applicants.
But then, just two weeks later, you have the Department of State send out guidance to all the counties informing them that verification must be done prior to sending out ballots.
However, perhaps this second guidance was too late because as of today, as we mentioned earlier, over a quarter million such ballots have been issued.
So, that's how it happened.
But the question that you're probably wondering now is, what happens next?
What happens to these quarter million ballots that have already been sent out to unverified voters?
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So, the second big question is what happens next?
What happens to these quarter million ballots that have already been sent out to unverified voters?
Well, according to Pennsylvania state law, these ballots, once they come back, must be set aside and they must not be counted for the general election unless that voter can produce an ID.
However, just imagine for a moment the logistics that are going to be involved in order to chase down a quarter million voters.
Just think about the additional level of staffing that's going to be needed, as well as the extra amount of time that it'll all take.
And this process can't be skipped either because it's required by law.
All these ballots must be set aside and the identities of those individuals must be verified prior to their votes being added to the tally.
However, here is, at least in my opinion, the most dangerous part of this whole scenario.
Dangerous, at least in terms of election integrity.
Because according to this congressional letter, some county election officials are already going ahead and just fixing the ballots themselves.
Here's what they wrote.
Quote, And the Social Security number matching verification, but they have no substantive role in that matching process.
County election officials report that, for some applicants, a letter may be generated and mailed to the voter, notifying them that the ID they provided did not match the Social Security Administration records.
The letter instructs those voters to produce a valid form of identification to the county board of elections.
However, if proof of ID is not received, the county election officials report that they can and do count the ballots without the ID from the voter.
In addition, several counties report that they can and do quote-unquote fix the invalid ID in the system and accept the ballot with no action taken by the voter.
Now that is shocking to say the least.
However, it is worth noting that we here at the Epoch Times have not been able to verify what's written in this congressional letter.
We have not been able to verify that this is indeed taking place, so take that for what it's worth.
However, setting that aside, the situation does create a relatively large problem.
Because even though it really might be the case that many of these unverified ballots had just some small errors in them, Maybe some voters just made a small mistake in writing the numbers or the letters on their forms.
It really doesn't matter because the purpose of the law, as it's written, is to ensure election integrity.
It's to ensure that the person voting by mail is who he or she claims they are.
And the law requires that these ballots must be set aside until the voter can provide adequate proof of idea.
And so the idea that these election officials are just going ahead and fixing the ballots themselves and counting them anyways is, well, it's illegal to say the least.
What's to stop them from just fixing the ones that they like and then setting aside the votes that they don't like?
Now, I'm not saying that's what's actually happening, but why allow a situation where it could?
Regardless, once all this came to light, the acting Pennsylvania Secretary of State, Ms.
Leigh Chapman, she came out and she said that there will likely be delays in posting the results of Pennsylvania's midterm elections.
Here's specifically what she said as a part of her statement.
So, voters and the public know that when there are delays in counting, it doesn't mean that there is anything nefarious happening.
It's just what the law is in Pennsylvania.
Ironically, though, during her speech, she did not really acknowledge the seemingly glaring mistake that the state of Pennsylvania itself made.
But instead, she alleges that the upcoming delays will be due to the fact that election workers cannot pre-canvas, nor can they count mail-in ballots prior to November 8, the actual date of the midterm elections.
Furthermore, in her statement, she also mentioned that across the entire state thus far, more than 1.2 million mail-in ballots have been requested and over 556,000 have been returned, which is about 43%.
Although it's worth noting that at the moment it's unclear what percentage of those return ballots came from a voter who wasn't verified prior to receiving it.
And so that is the current situation that we're seeing play itself out over in Pennsylvania, which actually kind of reminds me of a famous quote.
It had many different iterations over the years, but here's my favorite version.
Quote, Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Let the sentinels on the watchtower sleep not, and slumber not.
And indeed, I feel like the very fact that mistakes like this are able to come to light and be discussed openly like we're doing today is actually an indication that our system is working, as long as we are all eternally vigilant and as long as the sentinels on the watchtower don't fall asleep.
Now lastly, moving forward in this particular case, the 13 lawmakers ended the letter to the Secretary of State with a list of five requests.
Here they are for your reference.
1.
Immediately issue a directive to all counties informing them of the requirement to set those ballots aside and not pre-canvas, canvas, or count any of them unless and until the applicant provides a valid form of identification.
Make it clear to all counties that they may not quote-unquote fix non-matching identification and they may not count those ballots until proof of ID is received from the voter.
Two, immediately correct the guidance to reflect the testimony of Deputy Secretary Marx or provide the state government committee with an explanation for the false information provided under oath.
Three, immediately provide the legislature with a complete list of all names and voter IDs for all the applicants on which the last four digits of the Social Security numbers that were provided did not match the Social Security Administration records.
Four, immediately provide the legislature with a complete list of all names and voter IDs for all applicants on which the driver's license ID number provided did not match the driver's license records.
Due to the conflicting information provided by your department, counties should be required to certify that all these ballots have been set aside and make a record of the type of identification produced by the voter who previously provided non-matching ID.
If you'd like to read all the source material for today's episode, including the link to the Pennsylvania State Database, which actually shows you how many of these ballots have been sent to unverified voters, all those links will be down there in the description box below.
Furthermore, I'd love to know your thoughts on this particular issue.
Do you think that this was just an innocent mistake made on the part of the Pennsylvania election officials?
And what do you make of the Secretary of State's coming out and saying that it will take several days, maybe even a week, in terms of delays and counting, without addressing the elephant in the room, which was their own contradictory guidance?
Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
I'll be reading them later tonight, tomorrow, as well as over the weekend.
And then lastly, because there's just so much censorship around, if you happen to have a Telegram account, well, consider following our channel over there.
You can find it by searching for Facts Matter underscore Roman.
Telegram is a pretty good platform that doesn't actually censor free speech.
And so, in case anything ever happens here on YouTube, you can always stay in touch with us over on Telegram.
And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
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