Hello, Pennsylvania!

We’re hot off the presses bringing you some breaking news: Secretary Al Schmidt has sent a response to the Department of Homeland Security.

You may recall that on July 16, President Donald Trump gave a primetime address, during which he alleged the Department of Homeland Security had discovered hundreds of thousands of noncitizens on voter rolls across four states. One of those states was Pennsylvania, where the department said more than 14,000 potential noncitizens were discovered.

Today, we got a copy of Schmidt’s response letter. Essentially, he said “show us your math” (not a direct quote). Schmidt said before his department starts working with DHS, they'd like to understand the methodology the feds used. I’m sure it would also help to have the actual list of 14,000 potential noncitizen registrants, which DHS hasn’t provided. Read the full story here.

Next up on the PA-federal government dispute beat, Gov. Josh Shapiro joined a coalition of other states and state officials suing the Trump administration for withholding FEMA grant funds. The states allege the agency is withholding the funds — used for monitoring and responding to terrorism — as leverage to get the states to comply with the administration’s preferred election and immigration policies. Get the details on what the administration wants the states to do, and what the states are saying, here.

Finally, a little unfortunate news (sorry!). It looks like Pennsylvania is dead last in a new study of the registration rate for 18-year-olds across 30 states. Advocates say it's not that young people here are less motivated than in other states, it's that there are barriers in the state’s laws that make it harder to register young people than in other states. I’ve heard from some of you since I wrote this story who think there are plenty of opportunities for registration here, and I’m hoping to talk more about those perspectives if my tentative plan to turn this story into a radio segment comes to fruition. For now, read the story here.

Conservative activist Scott Presler has been posting on X recently that he is requesting the non-juror lists from all counties in Pennsylvania. The non-juror list is a list maintained by county courts of people called for jury duty who are determined to be unqualified for some reason, one of which is that they are noncitizens.

Presler has said he wants to cross-check the lists with the state’s voter rolls, suggested the Department of Homeland Security should do the same, and has used the lists to push the U.S. Senate to pass the SAVE America Act.

In Pennsylvania, jurors are selected from both the voter rolls and the state’s driver’s license database (see here). While you can’t register to vote as a noncitizen in Pennsylvania, you can get a driver’s license. 

“Its shocking that we found this problem in PA ten years ago, very publicly fixed it, and a neighboring State didn't learn from our own situation. Sloppy.”

This week’s quote comes to us from Lebanon County Elections Director Sean Drasher. He was commenting on news out of New Jersey that thousands of noncitizens had been registered to vote through a glitch in the state’s motor voter system. 

If that sounds familiar, as it did to Sean and me, that’s because Pennsylvania had a strikingly similar situation revealed back in 2017. I was on CNN last weekend to discuss the parallels, and you can catch that interview here.   

What else should I look into? You can always reach me by email at [email protected], on X @ByCarterWalker, or on Bluesky @bycarterwalker.bsky.social. Follow me on TikTok and Instagram for video explainers of Pennsylvania voting and elections news.

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