Pennsylvania’s State Senate passed a bill outlawing absentee-ballot drop boxes and accepting private funds, like “Zuckerbucks,” for election operations.
The senate action comes in the aftermath of the state’s Commonwealth Court that ruled Act 77, which expanded voting by mail, is unconstitutional.
Drop boxes are one of the measures contained in a 2019 bill known as Act 77 that permitted no-excuse absentee voting. Pennsylvania’s Department of State decision to use drop boxes during the 2020 general election ended up before the state’s Supreme Court, which gave its blessing.
Evidence of fraudulent voting methods used in Pennsylvania’s October 2021 general election was documented according to Lehigh County District Attorney James Martin. Mr. Martin provided videos that proved many people deposited more than one mail-in ballot in his county’s drop boxes. Pennsylvania law requires a voter to send an absentee ballot by mail or deliver it personally, according to a report in The Epoch Times.
Pennsylvania election law stipulates only voters with a disability who receive prior approval may have someone else deliver their ballot. The report noted that any other voter who has someone else deliver their ballot is committing election fraud, punishable by a $1,000 fine and a year in prison. Lehigh County reportedly has five drop boxes, which were used during the last election.
“Reviewing the video was a tedious and time-consuming job,” Martin said. “An attempt was made to observe the video for the entire time period between October 18 and November 2, for the drop-box located at the Lehigh County Government Center.” The district attorney explained one detective spent eight full work days doing only that.
The detective reportedly counted 2,756 people dropping ballots and was able to confirm 186 instances where more than one ballot was dropped by an individual, Martin said. The district attorney noted that, with ballots possibly stacked on top of one another looking like a single ballot, it was sometimes impossible to tell if more than one ballot was being dropped.
Math is absolute though and showed a concerning discrepancy. Martin explained that 2,756 individuals were counted using the ballot drop box, which contained 3,695 ballots. In other words, there were 939 more ballots than voters for that one drop box.
The other four locations were reviewed by sampling and offered similar results after noting how long it took to audit the first drop box.
“Although it cannot be determined with precision by review of the video surveillance, it can be stated with a high degree of certainty that a large number of voters deposited more than one ballot in the drop-boxes,” Martin said. “By count of the detectives at the four locations, there were a total of 4,026 voters observed, and 288 are confirmed as having been observed dropping more than one ballot.”
The bills now go to the state’s House, where similar bills are being crafted.
Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, reportedly said he is opposed to the bills from the Republican-controlled legislature.
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