Pennsylvania voters in Israel face challenges from pro-Trump activists

When Traci Siegel opened her email on Sunday, she was shocked to learn that her vote in the presidential election might not count.

Siegel, who lives in Israel, voted absentee in her home state of Pennsylvania, as she had done many times before, in accordance with federal law that requires states to allow Americans living abroad to vote through their last place of residence to vote for federal office. But this year, someone she doesn’t know paid $10 to appeal her vote.

“The Dauphin County Board of Elections has received an objection to your absentee ballot,” wrote the county’s elections director, Christopher T. Spackman. “The challenge states that a provision of the Pennsylvania Election Code preempts the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.”

Siegel was told she could appear in person at a hearing in the state capital Harrisburg on Friday, three days after the election — even though she is in Israel.

“When I first received the challenge, I felt attacked and helpless,” Siegel said Jewish insider. “My whole life I believed that voting was a basic right, and for someone to pay just $10 to take that away from me seemed crazy.”

American Democrats in Israel JI referred to a statement from VoteFromAbroad.org, an informational website run by the Democratic Party, saying the organization’s voter protection unit is working with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and citing “3,600 PA ballots are being sent abroad contested in nine states by individuals (on behalf of (Republican presidential candidate Donald) Trump).”

The disputed ballots don’t just affect Democrats. Republicans Overseas Israel told JI that some Pennsylvania voters who sought their help submitting their ballots also had their votes challenged.

Media reports in recent days have said the challenges come from Trump supporters claiming voter fraud, and last week a court in Harrisburg rejected a lawsuit by six Republican members of Congress that could have undermined the voting process from abroad. Mark Zell, vice president of Republicans Overseas Israel, said he was concerned that these efforts would impact Israeli voters in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is widely seen as a must-win state in the presidential election, and even a small number of disqualified ballots could affect the state’s results. In 2020, the winner of the presidential race in Pennsylvania was not announced until four days after the election. Litigation over Pennsylvania’s ballots could also negatively impact the state’s vote counting this year.

“What’s going to happen with this is that because they’ve been challenged, they’re now being set aside and not included in the count initially,” said Ari Savitzky, a senior staff attorney at the court. ACLU, said Tuesday. After local election boards decide later this week whether to reject the challenge, people who challenged the ballots will have two days to appeal the decision.

“Because the federal law is crystal clear here, I have every reason to expect that these people’s ballots will eventually be counted, but unfortunately that will be delayed because of this abuse of this contestation process,” Savitzky added.

The challenge to Siegel’s vote was filed by Aimee Lighty, a licensed therapist in Pennsylvania with a very small and apolitical social media footprint, according to the email Siegel received from the Dauphin County Board of Elections. Lighty didn’t respond to messages from JI about the challenge, but her name has at least been associated with it another disputed vote.

Lighty’s challenge to Siegel’s ballot appears to be consistent with what the ACLU described as “mass production challenges” that claim that “voters are not allowed to vote because they are outside the United States and are not registered to vote in Pennsylvania,” according to a letter from the ACLU to attorneys in the province of Pennsylvania.

The ACLU noted that “nearly 50 years ago, Congress established the right of overseas American citizens to vote in the district where they last lived, but only for federal elections… Although these voters may not technically be ‘registered’ to vote in Pennsylvania for For the purpose of state elections, federal law unquestionably protects their right to vote for federal office.”

“The appropriate course of action for any county that receives mass challenges to these federally qualified ‘overseas electors’ is to summarily dismiss the challenges as both procedurally and substantively deficient,” the ACLU wrote.

This was announced by the Pennsylvania Department of State The New York Times that the challenges were made “in bad faith” and are “based on theories that courts have repeatedly rejected” in an effort to “undermine confidence in the November 5 election.”

Many of the challenges were filed by Pennsylvania Senator Jarett Coleman, an attorney named Karen DiSalvo who represented Republican members of Congress in their lawsuit, and Charles Faltenovich of a group called PA Fair Elections, a group that represents Republican members of Congress. represented Congress in their lawsuit. CNN report found.

According to the US Embassy in Jerusalem, approximately 500,000 US citizens live in Israel. Trump is the most popular presidential candidate in Israel by a wide margin, according to recent opinion pollsand the voting patterns of Americans in Israel are expected to reflect that view. Representatives of both parties in Israel told JI that Republican candidates have received the most votes from Americans in Israel in recent decades.

In September, Trump posted on his Truth Social website that Democrats are “getting ready to cheat!” The Republican candidate claimed, without evidence, that his opponents planned to submit overseas ballots “without any form of citizenship check or identity verification. (Foreign interference?)”

Methods for Verifying Absentee Votes vary by statebut most require a Social Security number or a valid state driver’s license, as well as a valid signature verified against voter registration.

Days after Trump’s post suggesting Democrats abroad wanted to commit voter fraud, the Trump campaign began released a video in which the candidate appealed to American citizens living in Israel to vote for him because “no one in history has ever stood with Israel and the Jewish people as much as I have.” In addition, Trump released a video that appealed to foreign voters around the world, in which he promised to end double taxation of U.S. citizens living abroad.

Efforts to get out the vote in Israel continued through Tuesday, with the Family Research Council and prominent evangelical pastor Tony Perkins campaigning for Trump, along with settler leader and Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan. Hebrew And Englishemphasizing opposition to a two-state solution that would involve ceding the West Bank, “the biblical heartland where most of the Bible’s stories are set.”

Jewish Insider senior national correspondent Gabby Deutsch contributed reporting.