With the presidential primary just weeks away, Pennsylvanians need to know that our elections are safe and secure, featuring tried-and-tested systems that are proven to protect your vote and ensure accuracy in the results.
I know some voters remain concerned. But I can tell you firsthand that voters can be confident that the checks and balances in place guarantee the final count in any election reflects the will of the people.
As a former congressman for Pennsylvania’s 15th District, I had front-row seat in observing how our electoral process is administered for decades. Regardless of who wins a given election, I trust that Pennsylvania’s rock-solid systems of checks and balances ensure the accuracy of the results.
In Pennsylvania, our elections have many built-in processes for verification and review before, during and after a vote is cast so that each of us can be sure our votes are protected, and election results are accurate.
This includes measures like public inspections of voting machines, confirming voter eligibility and identity when casting ballots and bringing in people from all political parties to observe the process in-person. Transparency is key to the process.
Your ballot stays at the polling place until everyone has had the chance to vote. For added protection, observers and watchers from all political parties closely monitor the ballots. A team of trained poll workers never lets the ballots leave their sight as they are transported to a secure counting location.
Then, ballots from Election Day and from vote-by-mail are verified and counted, ensuring eligibility and accuracy. Officials carefully follow these procedures as outlined by state law to ensure exactly one voter per one eligible voter is counted. The vote count is checked and rechecked, sometimes even triple-checked, until all officials agree on a final tally.
Understanding the process is important. Pennsylvanians from different parties, citizen groups and independent organizations can observe this vote-counting process in-person.
Poll workers and election officials are a critical part of our democracy’s backbone. These dedicated friends, neighbors and co-workers undergo rigorous training to become experts on the elections process, rules and laws. They make sure every voter can freely, easily and conveniently access the polls and it takes tens of thousands of them to make our elections run smoothly.
By encouraging voters to learn more about how our elections work, my hope is that we can come together on Election Day and trust that the results have been delivered fairly and accurately.
This is in large part thanks to the tireless efforts of Pennsylvania’s election officials and poll workers who put in the long hours to ensure every vote counts. And they do so with a sense of integrity and pride that I cannot help but admire.
Charlie Dent served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district in the Lehigh Valley from 2005 to 2018.
Thank you Charlie Dent for telling the truth about elections despite your party’s insistence otherwise!!!
Vote counting ought to be transparent and auditable.
The 2020 election was neither.
Thank you! I had my suspicions in 2020, like a lot of people, but they’ve had three and a half years to prove that it was stolen and they’ve produced zero evidence. Time to move on, win in 2024, and stop whining already.
It is not a matter of dispute: 140,000 absentee ballots in Fulton County did not undergo signature verification.
Trump lost Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes.
More than 6,000 affidavits were filed in PA, MI, NV, AZ, GA and WI by citizens that personally witnessed alleged voting fraud and vote counting irregularities during the 2020 election. In Civics class a long time ago, affidavits were called “evidence”.
Not one affidavit was opened by a judge and investigated as an eyewitness statement as is required by the laws of those states. Ignoring evidence of fraud is not the same as “producing zero evidence”.
As our beloved President Biden said before the election “We have the most inclusive and extensive system of voter fraud ever created”. He wasn’t wrong.
The existing procedures and safeguards currently in place do not prevent someone’s ballot being filled out unknowingly by a third party and submitted via mail. More importantly there are no safeguards in place to prevent mass intentional illegal ballot harvesting (senior living facilities, workplaces, colleges, etc.) In PA the voting process, from the voting machines themselves, to the in-person act of voting itself, is not uniform – for instance some areas do not have a Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) and there is no transparency or technical discussion regarding how any audits of the electronic tallies are done to ensure consistency and accuracy. You may recall that some vote counts are done with pizza boxes over the windows (Philadelphia) and others are not. Remember?
Why in PA do we pretend it is important to wait until election day to count the mail-in ballots? If a ballot can arrive before – or after – election day they can certainly count and tabulate them early, too. Why not?
The judiciary also plays an important role in assuring the safety, security and accuracy of elections. Join Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts on Thursday at 7 pm to learn more about the judiciary’s role. https://www.pmconline.org/events/pmc-shares-workshop-role-courts-elections
That does not apply in Philadelphia County. The Judiciary is part and parcel of the Philadelphia Democratic Machine.
Happy April Fools Day, Congressman. Nice try. Any state that receives and counts ballots arriving after “Election Day” does not inspire confidence in their election systems, especially if they’ve counted undated and unsigned mail ballots.
Anybody that says the election results from Philadelphia is either ignorant of history or just a partisan hack.
The Aspen Institute’s Charlie Dent, the ultimate defender of all things swamp, is a little bit of both.
Wow! I really couldn’t stop laughing while reading this I wonder if he had a hard time keeping a straight face while writing it.
Sorry, but we were here and remember 2020 in PA.
Yes. I was a Republican poll watcher at the Philadelphia Convention Center election night. Upon our arrival, a group of about 20 Republican poll watchers had assembled but were denied entry. Seth Bluestein claimed our credentials were not properly applied for and would not issue our poll watcher badges. About an hour later (well into the counting) somehow we got our badges. Then we were lectured with something to the effect of: “you’re not going to be able to see anything, but trust that we will produce an accurate count.” What that meant, I had no idea until we went upstairs where the counting was going on, were greeted with floor to ceiling high quality graphic sign that told us what we were permitted to do and not permitted to do in our role as “poll watchers.” The law be damned. I wish I had photographed that. One of the “don’ts” — “No pictures are permitted”. Then we went into the counting rooms, huge almost acre wide expanse of the Convention Center housing the most sophisticated ballot counting machinery I had ever seen and designed specifically to handle the tidal wave of mail-in ballots. But … we were not permitted to get near the counting and were separated by over 20 feet of the nearest tables by police barriers. We could not see anything, and could not get on the floor … it was COVID, don’t you know. I tried taking a couple of pictures, but they had hired a security firm, Scotland Yard, who attempted to confiscate our phones if we “broke the rules.” Hundreds of thousand of ballots were brought into that room. They came from the back and presumably the loading docks and brought to the front. Hundreds of thousands of ballots. An avalanche. Chain of custody? Signature verification? A joke. It was a total set up from beginning to end in my opinion. I was able to take a picture of one our fellow Republican poll watchers who tried to see what was going on with a pair of binoculars. I titled the picture “Democracy at a Distance. “
The election was neither transparent nor auditable.
And the Ds wield lawfare against lawyers who raise legitimate questions.
This delusional person should read “Rigged” by Molly Hemmingway. Stop shoveling the Lies!