As Arizona faces a lawsuit over its ballot drop boxes, states across the country have taken different approaches to using unmanned receptacles for elections.
The Arizona Secretary of State has been sued for allegedly overstepping state law by permitting unstaffed ballot drop boxes, while Wisconsin is facing a lawsuit to allow ballot drop boxes.
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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.
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At Acting Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt’s initial confirmation hearing on Wednesday, many senators inquired about the commonwealth’s participation in a controversial voter data-sharing program.
Schmidt, a moderate Republican former Philadelphia city commissioner who subsequently was president of the left-leaning nonprofit Committee of Seventy, will sit for a second hearing covering non-electoral issues his department oversees (e.g., professional licensure). But Senate State Government Committee Chair Cris Dush (R-Bellefonte) suggested discussion of Pennsylvania’s participation in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) will come up then as well.
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With 60 percent of likely voters in a recent Rasmussen Reports poll saying that “cheating” likely affected the 2022 midterm elections, House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.) is seeking to reform Washington, D.C.’s elections to make the nation’s capital the “gold standard” for election integrity in the U.S.
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As recently as the mid-2000s, row offices were unwinnable for Democrats in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania — a GOP stronghold for over a century. By 2011, the Democrats would take over the Board of Commissioners. They now enjoy a three-to-two voter-registration advantage.
But now some Republicans sense voters are wearying of what the Democrats have overseen during their dozen-year ascendancy, including a “bail reform” measure that has unsettled local police. The commissioners also frequently increase property taxes, most recently by eight percent in 2022.
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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.
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Democrats are moving to implement new voting laws at the state level following their midterm wins, according to The New York Times.
Democratic governors and state legislators have expressed plans to push automatic voter registration, voter pre-registration for minors, an expansion of early and absentee voting and criminalization of election misinformation, according to the NYT. The party retained most of its governors in the 2024 election and maintained its hold over several key state legislatures, creating a clear path to instating many of its favored voting policies.
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The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) recognized Pierce County, Washington for its practices related to the chain of custody that helps track pick-up and chain of custody of vote-by-mail election ballots deposited in drop boxes.
Pierce County was an EAC “Clearie” Award winner in 2021 for outstanding innovations in elections for large jurisdictions. Having over 550,000 registered voters, Pierce County is Washington state’s second largest jurisdiction.
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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.
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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.
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) released a report this week on elections in his state—focusing especially on Maricopa County—advocating similar election reforms to those Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers currently seek.
While the report did not make criminal allegations regarding recent elections, it did declare that Arizona’s election system suffers from major procedural vulnerabilities including insufficient time to confirm signatures on ballots submitted during early voting and problems with the chain of custody for ballots placed in drop boxes. Altogether, the attorney general estimates that between 100,000 and 200,000 early ballots were transported without proper protocol being followed.
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Anyone with half an ounce of integrity knows the manner in which the 2020 election was conducted was neither free nor fair. Never before in our nation’s history did we have a presidential election with so many safety measures that were deliberately ignored or willfully removed. And never have we had an election with so much early voting, and mail-in voting.
All of this was made possible by drastic and unconstitutional rule changes implemented illegally by Democratic secretaries of state at the 11th hour, including the expanded use of mail-in ballots, unsupervised drop boxes, and ballot harvesting.
Yet the propagandists in the corporate media have remained silent about all of it, and have shown zero interest in exploring what may actually have occurred. Donald Trump is out of office. That’s all they care about.
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