Trump Claims Pennsylvania Is Sending Out Unverified Ballots—Here’s Why That’s False

Topline

Former President Donald Trump amplified a debunked claim Tuesday that 250,000 “unverified” ballots were mailed out to Pennsylvania voters, the latest in a string of unsubstantiated fraud claims from Trump, but the accusation–spread by conservative media platforms–is based on a misleading interpretation of Pennsylvania’s voter registration rules.

Key Facts

On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump posted an article from conservative site Just The News that suggested the Pennsylvania Department of State sends out mail-in ballots without verifying voters’ identities, citing a report by the election watchdog group Verity Vote.

“Here we go again! Rigged election!” Trump wrote to his 4.43 million followers on Truth Social above a link to the article.

The article references a letter sent by 12 Republican state lawmakers to Pensylvania’s Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Leigh Chapman last week claiming some counties “count the ballots without the ID from the voter,” while others “fix the invalid ID in the system.”

The claims are false: Pennsylvania voters must show proof of identification to cast their ballots in person in Pennsylvania or to apply for a mail-in ballot, according to the Department of State, and in the “vast majority” of cases, their identities are verified automatically by a system that cross-references other state databases, such as the Department of Transportation’s license directory, Chapman said in a letter to Republican lawmakers.

When voters’ identities cannot be verified through the application process–or when voters request permanent mail-in ballots that require re-verification of their identity every election cycle–their ballots are classified as “not verified” and undergo a separate process to confirm identities, according to Chapman.

Pennsylvania voters whose identities are not automatically verified have until the sixth day after an election to prove their identities, and their ballots are not counted until then and unless they supply proof of their identity, Chapman wrote.

Crucial Quote

“Your claims reflect a misunderstanding of the laws guiding processes surrounding voter registration and absentee/mail-in ballot applications,” Chapman wrote in response to the Republican lawmakers.

Big Number

7,600. That’s the actual number of mail-in ballot applications that still need to be verified, according to Chapman, who noted in her letter to Republican lawmakers they “do not clearly delineate” how they arrived at the 240,000 figure (the article Trump shared claims there are 10,000 more unverified ballots).

Contra

Verity Vote argues that voters’ identities should be verified before mail-in ballots are sent. The group called the practice “reckless in the modern era” in a statement to the Associated Press.

Key Background

Trump and his allies repeatedly made unfounded claims of voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, part of an unprecedented gambit to overturn Trump’s losses in Pennsylvania and several other key swing states. This year, some Republicans are already making efforts to discredit the integrity of the upcoming midterm election. GOP-aligned groups have deployed monitors to survey polling sites and search for clues that could be used to create a perception of negligence or mismanagement. In Arizona, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), who is running against Republican Kari Lake for governor, has referred at least 10 cases of voter intimidation to the Department of Justice. In some of the cases, voters have reported being photographed and followed at ballot drop boxes. Meanwhile, some Republican candidates, including Lake and Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, have refused to say if they will accept the results of the election. Meanwhile, a rural county in Nevada has sought to hand-count all ballots—a tedious process—due to baseless allegations of voting machine fraud, and officials in a small New Mexico county briefly refused to certify the results of a primary election earlier this year due to similar claims about voting machines.

Further Reading

The truth about election fraud: It’s rare (The Washington Post)

“Stop the Steal” conspiracy theories are coming for swing state ballot boxes (Vox)