Karen DiSalvo, left, and Heather Honey exit the Sylvia H. Rambo federal courthouse in Harrisburg on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024, after a court hearing on a lawsuit filed by six Republican congressman challenging mail ballots sent to overseas voters from Pennsylvania. Honey is a leader of PA Fair Elections, a group that spreads false information about the 2020 election results and is coordinating with other activists on election security measures ahead of the November 2024 election.
As the democracy reporter for WITF, I will cover any kind of story that has to do with how we govern ourselves. That will include doing a lot of election coverage about how to access the ballot, how public officials administer elections, the technology used to run and secure elections, and the laws that govern it all.
My work will also include accountability coverage for elected officials that use their positions to then undermine democratic institutions, like the legislators that voted against the certification of the presidential election results on January 6, 2021. If that weren’t enough, I foresee covering some local government decisions, fights over public records and transparency, and some candidate coverage in 2024. Many stories can have a “democracy frame” meant to help us all understand how our governments work and how we can shape them.
I’m most looking forward to the community reporting about which WITF is passionate. I’ll be talking to a lot of folks about what they want out of their governments, local to national, and how they want to make their visions reality. I’m excited to meet you and talk, with or without a microphone on hand.
I also like to turn my work phone off. When I do that, I’m looking for rocks to climb, trails to run on (slower and slower, somehow), and new places to visit. I’ve lived in the (extended) South for most of my life, so y’all will hear me say things funny and sometimes my hearing is funny, too, so we’ll figure out this radio thing together.
Jaxon White / LNP | LancasterOnline
Karen DiSalvo, left, and Heather Honey exit the Sylvia H. Rambo federal courthouse in Harrisburg on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024, after a court hearing on a lawsuit filed by six Republican congressman challenging mail ballots sent to overseas voters from Pennsylvania. Honey is a leader of PA Fair Elections, a group that spreads false information about the 2020 election results and is coordinating with other activists on election security measures ahead of the November 2024 election.
Activists who worked for months to remove voters from Pennsylvania’s rolls are celebrating thousands of such removals made by counties in the last 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 monitoring local elections, shared an email with WITF that read, “This week’s Restoring Confidence results were awesome!!! There was a total of 11,878 out-of-state registrants removed from PA voter 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, a group of activists who maintained that the 2020 presidential election results in Pennsylvania were inaccurate. Its members strategized for much of the past year about ways to counter what it alleged were 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.
Election officials at the counties did not confirm the specific numbers listed in the email, though they said the removals were the result of voter roll cleaning required by law.
“ I’m glad they consider us restoring their confidence, but at the same time, we never did anything to take away from their confidence,” said Jim Allen, elections director for Delaware County.
After every federal election, counties remove inactive voters from the rolls in order to follow state law and the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
Allen, along with county staff from Beaver and Cumberland counties, said no outside group had anything to do with them and that all voters who have been inactive after two federal elections were removed, not just those identified by the group.
Organizing election skepticism
Both the institute, which is based in Lebanon County, and PA Fair Elections were involved in challenging mail-in and overseas voters ahead of the November election. PA Fair Elections also joined a lawsuit alongside six of Pennsylvania’s Republican congressmen to challenge ballot applications of military and overseas voters. Each effort failed.
Austin said the email came to her from a person named Linda and declined to provide her last name. A Centre 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 was on PA Fair Elections calls attended by a LNP reporter earlier this year. Honey is a “member and representative” of the group, according to a lawsuit she filed in August against the state’s process for verifying the identity of military and overseas voters. She supported efforts to cast doubt on the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona.
WITF asked Sheckler and Honey if the email originated from their group, which uses the website RestoreConfidence.org.
Sheckler did not respond to an email or a 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.
Voter roll cleaning
Voter registration and voter roll maintenance are governed by a mix of state and federal laws. Per the 1993 federal law on voter registration, inactive voters can be removed after two federal election cycles of being inactive.
“ Because that’s the timeline, the removal process kind of naturally occurs after a general election,” said Colin Sisk, Beaver County’s election director.
That process explains the numbers celebrated in the email Austin received.
But that process is also one that groups like PA Fair Elections says is inadequate, in large part because they believe it takes too long to remove voters.
It takes either four or nine years to remove a voter from the rolls. In the case where a county receives a notification that a voter moved out of state, the county will reach out by mail to that voter’s registration address twice. If there’s no response, they go on the inactive list. Pennsylvania is part of a 24-state partnership called the Electronic Registration Information Center that notifies member states about people who move and register in a new state, in many cases allowing them to be removed immediately.
If the voter doesn’t cast a ballot or otherwise notify the county board of elections 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 neither voting or interacting in other ways with their county board of elections. Then, the four-year countdown starts, creating a nine-year process for being removed.
Austin’s efforts, backed by Election Research Institute
Before the November election, Austin said she mailed thousands of letters to voters registered in Pennsylvania but who show up in the National Change of Address database as living elsewhere.
Austin’s letter informed them that they needed to contact Pennsylvania officials and ask to be removed. The letter included the official document voters are required to fill out as well as a pre-stamped and addressed envelope for them to send it back to the Cumberland County Board of Elections.
“I’m proud of the effort I did to get people removed because I think they should be removed,” Austin said.
Cumberland County’s election director, Bethany Salzarulo, said Austin and other self-described election integrity advocates had asked the county to remove voters from the rolls earlier in the summer. The county declined because the request was not in line with federal law.
“ There are people who, let’s say for example, are in the military, who are allowed to keep a home of residence here in Pennsylvania but obviously live or are stationed elsewhere,” Salzarulo said.
Contacting voters directly is a new strategy for election integrity groups, Salzarulo said.
By late September, her office had received a “minimum of 50 calls” from people who were confused or angry about receiving letters like the ones Austin sent, calls that Salzarulo said distracted her staff from actually preparing for the upcoming election.
Sometimes, your mornings are just too busy to catch the news beyond a headline or two. Don’t worry. The Morning Agenda has got your back. Each weekday morning, host Tim Lambert will keep you informed, amused, enlightened and up-to-date on what’s happening in central Pennsylvania and the rest of this great commonwealth.
