Former president Donald Trump on Wednesday lodged claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania, a state critical to his election prospects. But Democratic officials and voting rights advocates said that Trump’s allegations are wildly exaggerated and that the problems he and Republicans are focused on are not only common, but also proof that election safeguards are working as intended.
For months, Trump has been using misinformation to lay the groundwork to claim a stolen election if he loses, just as he did in 2020. Now, with days to go before Election Day, Trump and his Republican allies appear to be increasingly focused on creating the impression that there is an array of problems with Pennsylvania’s elections and that the results can’t be trusted.
The former president has posted on social media and complained at rallies in recent days about alleged fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster and York counties. On Wednesday, his campaign sued Bucks County, a swing suburb outside Philadelphia, over allegations that voters were turned away when trying to vote by mail in person.
“Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before. REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) responded on X. “Let’s remember, in 2020, Donald Trump attacked our elections over and over,” Shapiro wrote. “He’s now trying to use the same playbook to stoke chaos, but hear me on this: we will again have a free and fair, safe and secure election — and the will of the people will be respected.”
Trump in 2020 used false fraud claims to try to undermine the legitimacy of the election and then challenged the results as rigged when he lost. Experts and officials say the Pennsylvania claims are in keeping with his insistence that the only way he can lose this year is if the other side cheats, suggesting that he intends to cry foul if he loses again.
Lancaster County election officials announced last week that they had identified around 2,500 voter registration applications that were potentially fraudulent and that local law enforcement was investigating. The local district attorney, Heather Adams, said her team had found that about 60 percent of the 2,500 were potentially illegitimate, with problems such as incomplete addresses and duplicate handwriting on multiple forms. The officials said the large batch of applications appeared to have come from a paid canvassing operation, but they did not name the group.
Soon after, officials in York County said a group had dropped off thousands of voter registration and mail-in ballot applications that they were reviewing. Like Lancaster, they did not name the group, and they did not go as far as Lancaster in claiming potential fraud.
On Tuesday, Trump went after both counties on social media. He also said at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that “they’ve already started cheating in Lancaster.”
Officials and voting advocates strenuously disagreed, saying the fact that the registrations were flagged shows there is a system in place to catch ineligible registrations. They also said there is little evidence that the flagged registrations were a nefarious attempt to register fake voters, rather than the sloppy work of a paid canvasser trying to meet a quota. They also noted that these are claims of faulty applications, not votes.
“The idea that there is widespread fraud is completely false and without any evidence, and is designed to sow doubt and ultimately subvert the election,” said Neil Makhija, a Democratic commissioner in Montgomery County, who has been actively pushing back against Republicans’ election fraud claims.
Kyle Miller, Pennsylvania policy strategist for Protect Democracy, said Republicans seem to be planting the idea that if problems were uncovered in Lancaster and York, two counties Trump won overwhelmingly in 2020, fraud could be occurring unnoticed in other parts of the state.
“There’s no evidence of that happening,” Miller said, “and I am confident that election officials are putting in the same due diligence and making sure their voter rolls are clean and accurate.”
The Trump campaign on Wednesday sued the Bucks County Board of Elections, claiming that voters who had lined up to cast an in-person mail-in ballot on Tuesday, the last day to do so, were turned away hours before the election office closed. Pennsylvania does not have early voting, but it does allow people to request a mail-in ballot in person and drop it off. Long lines to request a mail-in ballot have been reported all over the state.
Diane Ellis-Marseglia, a Democratic commissioner in Bucks County, said staff had put up a sign letting people know that after a certain spot in line, they might not have time to apply and vote. But they later clarified that anyone in line by 5 p.m. would be able to do so. The Trump lawsuit does not say how many voters were allegedly turned away but cited “many” and “numerous” voters.
Late Wednesday afternoon, a county judge sided with the Trump campaign, saying Bucks County had violated state election code and ruled that the county must extend in-person mail-in voting to Thursday.
The alleged issues with Pennsylvania’s elections follow months of Republican legal efforts to require officials not to count mail-in votes over technical mistakes, such as misdating the outside ballot envelope. The Republican National Committee this week asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to stop voters who forget to put their mail-in ballot in a secrecy envelope from casting provisional ballots on Election Day.
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