Pa counties. cleans the voter rolls, electoral skeptics praise the routine process

Activists who have worked for months to remove voters from Pennsylvania’s rolls are celebrating thousands of such removals by counties in the past month. But while the group appears to link its activism to those removals, county election officials say they are actually the result of routine post-election maintenance.

Deborah Austin, a retired Cumberland County resident who has been active in local election monitoring, sent an email with WITF that said, “This week’s Restoring Trust results were awesome!!! A total of 11,878 out-of-state registrants were removed from PA electoral rolls this week!”

Austin said the email was originally sent by the Election Research Institute and was shared with her because of her involvement with PA Fair Elections, an activist group that claimed the results of Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential election were inaccurate. Its members have spent much of the past year working out ways to counter what they say are Democratic plans to steal the state’s votes again.

The email listed Delaware, Cumberland, Monroe, Northampton, Adams and Beaver counties as having the most voters removed from the rolls, in that order.

County election officials would not confirm the specific numbers listed in the email, though they said the deletions were the result of a cleanup of voter rolls required by law.

“I’m glad they think we’re restoring their trust, but at the same time, we’ve never done anything to take away their trust,” said Jim Allen, Delaware County’s director of elections.

After each federal election, counties remove inactive voters from the rolls to comply with state law and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

Allen, along with county staff in Beaver and Cumberland counties, said no outside groups dealt with them and that all voters who were inactive after two federal elections were removed, not just those identified by the group.

The organization of electoral skepticism

Both the institute, which is based in Lebanon County, and PA Fair Elections were involved in canvassing mail-in and overseas voters before the November election. PA Fair Elections also joined a lawsuit with six Pennsylvania Republican congressmen to challenge the voting requirements of military and overseas voters. Every effort failed.

Austin said the email came to her from a person named Linda and declined to provide her last name. A Center County woman named Linda Sheckler is the Institute’s principal officer, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings. Heather Honey of Lebanon County is its executive director.

Sheckler attended calls for fair elections in the PA attended by an LNP reporter earlier this year. Honey is a “member and representative” of the group, according to a lawsuit it filed in August against the state’s military and overseas voter ID process. She supported efforts to question 2020 Pennsylvania and Arizona election results.

WITF asked Sheckler and Honey if the email came from their group, which uses RestoreConfidence.org.

Sheckler did not respond to an email or Facebook message or a phone call to the number listed on her voter registration. Honey also did not respond to emails sent to three addresses.

Cleaning the voter list

Voter registration and voter roll maintenance are governed by a combination of state and federal laws. Under the federal voter registration law of 1993, inactive voters can be removed after two federal election cycles of inactivity.

“Because this is the timeline, the removal process naturally occurs after a general election,” said Colin Sisk, Beaver County’s director of elections.

This process explains the numbers celebrated in the email Austin received.

But that process is also one that groups like PA Fair Elections see as inadequate, largely because they believe it takes too long to screen out voters.

It takes four to nine years to remove a voter from the rolls. If a county receives notification that a voter has moved out of state, the county will contact the voter’s registration address twice by mail. If there is no response, they go to the inactive list. Pennsylvania is part of a 24-state partnership called Electronic registration information center which informs member states of people moving and registering in a new state, allowing in many cases their immediate removal.

If the voter does not vote or otherwise notify the county council of the election that they are still at their old address, they are removed from the rolls after two federal elections or four years.

Otherwise, a voter can become inactive after five years of not voting or otherwise interacting with the county board of elections. Then the four-year countdown begins, creating a nine-year process to be eliminated.

Austin’s efforts, supported by the Election Research Institute

Before the November election, Austin said he mailed thousands of letters to voters who are registered in Pennsylvania but appear in the national change-of-address database as living elsewhere.

Austin’s letter informed them that they must contact Pennsylvania officials and request their removal. The letter included the official document for voters to fill out and a pre-stamped, addressed envelope to return to the Cumberland County Board of Elections.

“I’m proud of the effort we’ve made to remove people because I think they should be removed,” Austin said.

Cumberland County Elections Director Bethany Salzarulo said Austin and other election integrity advocates asked the county to remove voters from the rolls earlier this summer. The county refused because the request did not comply with federal law.

“There are people who, let’s say, are in the military, who are allowed to keep a residence here in Pennsylvania, but they obviously live or are stationed elsewhere,” Salzarulo said.

Contacting voters directly is a new strategy for election integrity groups, Salzarulo said.

By the end of September, her office had received “at least 50 calls” from people who were confused or upset about receiving letters like the ones Austin sent, calls that Salzarulo said distracted her staff from the actual preparation for the upcoming elections.

Read more from our partners, WITF.