Hello, Pennsylvania!

We’ve got another scoop for you on a story we’ve been chasing all year.

But first, in a shameless plug, go check out Votebeat PA’s first video on Tik Tok and Instagram! 

A corny joke? Maybe a little. But it seems like a fun way to connect with new audiences and bring them our expertise on voting and election issues. What else do you want to see me cover there? Let me know.

Now, onto the news. You’ll hopefully recall our story from February, when we scooped that the state was going to test out internet-connected e-pollbooks. Election officials hope that allowing this capability will help them more quickly address Election Day issues and monitor turnout. Well at least for now, it seems they’re pulling the plug on the pilot project. The state says it will be postponed until at least 2027. Get the full details here.

By now, you’ve probably seen the court ruling giving people access to cast vote records. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said these records, which are digital copies of the votes cast at precincts, are not “contents of ballot boxes” and cannot be withheld under the state’s open records law. But what does it mean for counties using voting systems that weren’t part of the lawsuit? Is that data sufficiently randomized so as to not expose anyone’s votes? Learn more in our story here.

This week’s quote comes from North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, in comments reported by DC Examiner editor Dave Sivak, about state Sen. Doug Mastriano’s nomination to be ambassador to Slovakia. Sivak reported that Tillis’ gripe with Mastriano was because of Mastriano’s views on January 6.

For those of you who have memory-holed 2020 (not judging at all, I get it), Mastriano was a key figure in Pennsylvania questioning the 2020 election results and supporting Donald Trump's false assertions of election fraud. Mastriano himself was also at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob disrupted the 2020 election certification. He was seen in an area beyond a police barricade, though there is no evidence that he himself entered the building.

You’re getting a twofer this week.

On the May 4 edition of PCN TV, Republican state Sen. Cris Dush was talking about voter ID and citing examples of fraud when he said:

“Just this year we had over 2,500 fraudulent votes in Lancaster County, voter registrations.”

Democrat state Sen. Anthony Williams, who was on the program with him, followed-up that the people Dush was mentioning in Lancaster, “a lot of them were Republicans.”

Both of the senators got something wrong. Dush appeared to be referencing the 2024 case of attempted voter registration fraud in Lancaster, which was in the news again because an organizer of the registration drive at the heart of the case had pleaded guilty. The Lancaster District Attorney had announced in October 2024 that a group had submitted roughly 2,500 voter registration applications, which they were investigating, and that potentially 60% of them were fraudulent. It was later determined that less than 900 were fraudulent or suspected to be fraudulent. But more importantly, these were just applications to register, and no one who was not eligible to vote was registered as a result. That’s a big difference from “2,500 fraudulent votes.”

Williams could have corrected that, but instead he suggested they were majority Republicans. While it’s true that the county as a whole is majority Republican, the county did not provide a partisan breakdown on the forms, and the Attorney General, who is prosecuting the case, has been clear that there was no partisan intent in the alleged scheme.

There’s an interesting new case out of Philly I am watching. A Republican is suing to block the city’s requirement that write-in candidates for ward party committee positions receive at least 10 votes. Election officials often complain that the low write-in barrier for some of these low-profile positions frequently lead to ties and take up their time having to deal with candidates who didn’t actually want to win the position. If the city case were to get appealed up, it could potentially set precedent for other counties to create write-in thresholds, possibly making it harder to be elected this way. 

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 Tik Tok and Instagram for video explainers of Pennsylvania voting and elections news.

And if you know someone who might be interested in our reporting on elections and voting throughout Pennsylvania, forward them this newsletter — they can sign up for it here.

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