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 around the major elections. As seen in my coverage of immigrant of LGBTQ+ communities, I also report on the consequences of elections for minority groups.
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.
Update: This story was updated Aug. 29 to include a response from the White House.
A Pennsylvania-based activist tied to President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election is now overseeing election security matters for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Heather Honey, of Lebanon County, is serving as the deputy assistant secretary for elections integrity, a political appointment in the department’s Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, according to the department’s website.
The office is responsible for leading, conducting and coordinating “Department-wide policy development and implementation and strategic planning,” according to its page.
DHS did not answer questions about Honey’s responsibilities, or whether she will still be able to both work in government and hold positions in several advocacy groups that push conspiratorial election claims.
Honey did not respond to a message left at Haystack Investigations, her Lebanon-based company that offers training in investigations based on social media, publicly available data and corporate audits.
Honey runs PA Fair Elections, a group of conservative activists who look for election fraud and, in some cases, file right to know requests and file lawsuits. In September 2024, Honey and several of Pennsylvania’s Republican members of Congress sued the state in federal court over its rules for letting military members and overseas voters vote in federal elections.
U.S. Reps. Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, Lloyd Smucker and G.T. Thompson joined the case, which a federal judge dismissed last October.
Trump referenced Honey’s flawed research from the stage on January 6, 2021, before a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and temporarily halted certification of the presidential election results.
According to the White House, at least part of Honey’s speaker page on the PA Leadership Conference was incorrect. The description states Honey “was the lead investigator on President Trump’s criminal defense team supporting his January-6 trial preparation.” A White House spokesperson said Honey “was not involved on the criminal defense team at all, and that description is inaccurate.”
In the years since, Honey has continued to publish flawed analyses of election data in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, including Arizona, claiming to find cases where there were more votes than voters or other discrepancies that election officials have routinely dismissed.
In addition to founding PA Fair Elections, Honey founded Verity Vote, a group that puts out investigations into elections, including Honey’s initial and discredited analysis that Pennsylvania had more votes than voters in the 2020 election. She also leads the Election Research Institute, which claims to find and mitigate flaws in election systems.
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