(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) As the midterms approach, the elections policy of the state of Pennsylvania is in disarray, facing many issues with their mail-in voting process, special elections reporting and the discovery of pervasive election fraud.
The city of Philadelphia recently announced that the mail-in voting process would be shortened from 50 days—the maximum allowed by state law—to 29 days due to a bureaucratic snafu, the Post Millennial reported.
Because of complications arising from four new special election matches for the city council, which were unplanned and announced at different times, the ballots for the city were not correct in time for the Sept. 19 deadline.
The city’s ability to send out the ballots correctly was pushed back in order for them to match the November ballots.
When reporting on the issue, Axios cited “experts” like Kallel Edwards, organizer of activist group Black Votes Matter Pennsylvania, who said “a lot of people don’t know they have that [mail-in] option.”
Meanwhile, former representative of Pennsylvania’s 1st district, Michael Myers, 79, was recently sentenced to an additional 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to “conspiracy to deprive voters of civil rights, bribery, obstruction of justice, falsification of voting records, conspiring to illegally vote in a federal election, and for orchestrating schemes to fraudulently stuff the ballot boxes.”
The former Democrat congressman admitted in court to “bribing the Judge of Elections for the 39th Ward, 36th Division in South Philadelphia in a fraudulent scheme over several years,” and bribing an election official “to illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections.”
U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero stated that Myers also stuffed ballot boxes for fellow Democrats in the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 state elections.
“Myers also admitted to conspiring to commit election fraud with another former Judge of Elections for the 39th Ward, 2nd Division in South Philadelphia,” Romero wrote in a press release. “Myers’ accomplice was the de facto Judge of Elections and effectively ran the polling places in her division by installing close associates to serve as members of the Board of Elections.”
Myers previously served time in prison on charges of bribery and corruption for his involvement in the “Abscam” scandal, where he took money from FBI agents posting as Arab sheiks.
While he was active throughout the state the bulk of Myer’s activity was focused on the city of Philadelphia, managing to pull the strings of elections for at least a decade.
The fight for just election laws in Philadelphia has been contentious, particularly since the 2020 presidential election.
A series of lawsuits against the city have lead to multiple discoveries of voter fraud, such as the kicking out of a Trump poll watcher on election night, ballot tampering, votes from 20,000 deceased Pennsylvania residents and the allowance of no-excuse mail-in voting.
In January 2022, a Pennsylvania court ruled that no-excuse mail-in voting was unconstitutional, which directly challenged the state’s Act 77.
Implemented and approved by the state General Assembly and signed by then-Governor Tom Wolf, Act 77 created the state’s mail-in voting law, allowing voters to submit ballots up to 50 days before an election and to receive ballot applications in the mail.
It also expanded voter registration, extended deadlines for submission, made rules for voting machine decertification and collected funding for voting machine upgrades.
An appeal to the state Supreme Court left the law in place, allowing the state’s residents to continue voting by mail.
While many Republicans in the area are fighting to take back election law from the hands of fraudsters, the state’s corrupt institutions have not allowed for much progress.
However, the continued lawsuits and findings by watchdog groups and other local officials continue to reveal just how deep the fraud runs; it is possible that Myer will not be the last corrupt official put on the stand.
