2024 Pennsylvania Election: Last-minute battleground issues targeting thousands of mail-in ballots

PITTSBURGH, PA – Thousands of mail-in ballots in the battleground state of Pennsylvania were rejected in a last-minute campaign that raised alarm among voting rights groups and irritated local election officials.

The effort, which appears to be led by just a few people, is aimed at throwing out ballots from foreign voters and challenging the eligibility of people who at some point asked to have their mail forwarded to another address.

More than a dozen counties are facing these issues, according to CNN’s call to local and state officials.

Some election officials have already dismissed the complaints as unfounded, but they come as officials scramble to hold Tuesday’s runoff election in a state that could determine the outcome of the race for the White House.

“This will make voters nervous and, frankly, create a completely unnecessary workload for election officials when they are trying to do important work,” said Ari Savitsky, senior attorney for the ACLU.

In some counties, objections were filed minutes before Friday’s deadline to file such objections. Bucks County, for example, received about 1,200 calls from out-of-state voters about 15 minutes before Friday’s 5 p.m. deadline, according to county spokesman Jim O’Malley.

All of the lawsuits filed in Bucks County, which includes Philadelphia’s northeast suburbs, were filed by Pennsylvania state Sen. Jarrett Coleman, O’Malley said. Coleman also filed 519 challenges to foreign voters in Lehigh County, according to Tim Benyo, the county’s elections director.

Coleman, a Republican who represents parts of both counties, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Republican state Sen. Chris Dash filed a challenge with 77 constituents in Center County; his office declined to comment.

A statement from the office of Pennsylvania’s top elections official, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, described the “bad faith mass challenges” as a “coordinated effort” “based on theories that have been repeatedly rejected by the courts.”

The ballots of at least 3,000 overseas Americans who applied to vote by mail in Pennsylvania have been disputed. Hundreds of mail-in voters were also hit with claims that appeared to be compiled using a U.S. Postal Service database for people who requested address changes.

Republicans and outside conservative groups have launched legal attacks on overseas ballots in several battleground states, including Pennsylvania, after Democrats touted efforts to throw out citizens living abroad.

Although overseas voting has long been associated with military voters, the number of civilian expatriates overseas today outnumbers these voters. There were more than 28,000 foreign voters in Pennsylvania, a state that President Joe Biden won by fewer than 90,000 votes, in the 2020 presidential election.

Districts resolve problems quickly

Chester County rejected 212 claims filed last week based on U.S. Postal Service data at a hearing Friday in which several people who were denied asserted their right to vote in Pennsylvania, with some citing their current status as college students for outside the state. or graduate school.

In Lycoming County, the mail ballots of 71 out-of-state voters were challenged by Karen DiSalvo, who previously represented a group of Republican congressmen from Pennsylvania who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit demanding stricter vetting procedures for overseas ballots. Pennsylvania officials said the lawsuit risks disenfranchising “tens of thousands” of overseas voters, including some who wear uniforms.

In an email to CNN, DiSalvo said she has filed lawsuits against non-military members overseas who applied to vote by mail but were not registered to vote in the county.

In Washington and Beaver counties, a total of 265 mail-in ballot applications have been challenged by Charles Faltenovich, who sits on the steering committee of PA Fair Elections, which says it is committed to “secure elections” in the state and has been involved in the overseas voting lawsuit. in Pennsylvania.

Faltenovich told CNN that his concerns were not related to the group and that he was pursuing applicants who indicated in their ballot applications that they were currently and indefinitely out of the country and that they were not members of the military.

While states can enforce voter registration requirements for foreign citizens, Pennsylvania’s law does not appear to address that category of voters directly, said Michael Morley, an election law expert at Florida State University. And federal law makes clear that those voters have the right to continue voting in the state in which they last resided while living in the United States, he added.

“In the absence of a registration requirement that applies to (voters from abroad), election officials are required to submit absentee ballot applications in a timely manner,” Morley said.

The deadline for county election officials to address these issues is Nov. 8, when the Lycoming County Board of Elections has scheduled a hearing on complaints filed there. If a voter is disqualified, he or she has the opportunity to appeal to a Pennsylvania court, as does a challenger whose challenge is denied.

DiSalvo told CNN she would “probably challenge the objections in court” if they were rejected by the county board.

CNN’s Danya Gaynor contributed to this report.