Mark Schweiker: Hard-working Pennsylvanians ensure safe, secure elections
Pennsylvania’s elections are safe and secure, featuring tried-and-tested systems that are proven to protect the vote and ensure accuracy in the results. Still, with November 5 just two weeks away, some voters are concerned about how our elections are run. They shouldn’t be.
I’ve had a front-row seat to plenty of elections. As Pennsylvania’s top executive, I worked directly with our Department of State to safeguard the built-in processes that protect the integrity of the system. As a Bucks County commissioner, I served as a member of the county’s Board of Elections, where I had a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into protecting your vote. The process is rigorous.
I’m confident in the safeguards in place, and you should be, too.
The commonwealth has implemented a range of measures to ensure that every aspect of election administration, from voter registration to logic and accuracy testing to the certification of results is both safe and secure.
One of the joys of campaigning for office and serving in an elected post is all the people you meet. That’s especially true on Election Day. That’s when you meet the true champions of democracy.
Statewide, Pennsylvania utilizes about 45,000 poll workers to staff 9,000 voting locations. These dedicated friends, neighbors and co-workers undergo rigorous training to become experts on the rules and laws of the election process.
Local election officials and poll workers put in long hours on election day to ensure everything runs as planned. It takes tens of thousands of everyday Pennsylvanians – people from both parties – to make sure our elections run smoothly.
They did it in April during the primary election – and every election before that – and they will do it again in November during the general election.
Another reason our elections work so well is because transparency is a key part of the process, and anyone can witness it by serving as a poll worker for the county or as a poll watcher for their parties or candidates of choice.
Seeing really is believing.
And there is a lot to see in how our elections are run. For most voters, though, their only experience is going to the polls to cast their ballots.
If we want voters to be confident in how Pennsylvania’s elections are run and how the votes are counted, then it’s up to us to give them a behind-the-scenes look at the many systems in place that safeguard the electoral process and protect their vote.
It starts before Election Day, with public testing of voting machines and systems. All 67 counties in the commonwealth conduct pre-election logic and accuracy testing. These stress tests ensure the integrity of ballots, scanners, ballot-marking devices, and all components of a county’s certified voting system.
It happens on Election Day, too, when those trained workers confirm voter eligibility and identity when ballots are cast. And it continues after the election has ended, when people are brought in from all political parties to observe the vote-counting process.
The reality is our elections have many built-in processes for verification and review before, during and after a vote is cast.
Ballots from election day and the mail are verified and counted, ensuring eligibility and accuracy every step of the way. Officials carefully follow these legal procedures to ensure exactly one vote per one eligible voter is counted. The final vote count is audited twice to confirm accuracy. Local election vote counts are publicized and certified in public meetings, which you can attend yourself.
These checks and balances happen in every election in Pennsylvania so we can rest assured that votes are cast fairly and counted correctly.
For those of us involved in civic engagement, we all want the same thing: We want voters to participate confidently in the electoral process.
By encouraging voters to learn more about how our elections work, we can come together on election day and trust that the results have been delivered fairly and accurately.
Mark S. Schweiker was the 44th Pennsylvania Governor and prior served as a Bucks County commissioner and member of its board of elections.
Okay, then lets start by getting a voters’ party affiliation correctly entered into the Chesco voter database, when one applied to vote on October 21st. That would have been a good start. When a voter WRITES IN THEIR “OTHER” PARTY as INDEPENDENT, its weird to be assigned to either red or blue. I was. It won’t prevent me from voting in the Presidential election, but can pose a problem later. And I would also recommend ANSWERING THE PHONE at the CHESCO voter gov office. Getting a recorded message of , ” We are busy with other calls, call back later,” does not give a voter much confidence in the system. Just sayin.’
Schweiker is an out-of-touch RINO trying hard not to offend his lucrative contacts – party and country be damned.
OK Mark, here’s a question:
If the Democrats truly believe that Trump is “literally Hitler”, then from their perspective don’t they have a moral obligation to cheat to prevent his presidency?
Motive ✅
Means ✅
From the Lancaster County Board of Elections – Oct 25, 2024
“Board of Elections staff members identified and contained incidents of voter registration fraud. Elections staff and the District Attorney’s Office are currently assessing the nature and volume of the fraud. Suspected fraudulent voter registration forms were dropped off at the Board of Elections Office in two batches at or near the deadline for submission. There are approximately 2,500 voter registration applications total in these two batches. Concerns were raised during the staff’s normal process to review and enter applications into the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors System and law enforcement was alerted.”
Frank, You are correct. I responded directly to “Judah” with links regarding that Colorado story about fraudulent ballots getting thru and becoming part of the official count because they can’t be identified once they are counted; as well as with links to this Lancaster story, per “Judah” request in the comment section of Christine Flowers’ article… And those links were immediately published by Broad + Liberty… and then just as quickly disappeared.
Both KYW and WHYY have reported on the Lancaster story. Basically, election workers in one [presuming it was Lancaster] county flagged about 2,500 voter registration forms for potential fraud. Two other [PA] counties were alerted to look for similar problems. “Two other counties “received similar applications” and were notified to check into them, Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said at a news conference. She declined to name the other counties. “It appears to be an organized effort at this point,” said Adams, an elected Republican. “But of course, it’s an ongoing investigation. And we’ll be looking into who exactly participated in it and how far up it goes.” About [60%] of the applications that have so far been fully investigated have had problems, Adams said. Other applications among the 2,500 have been verified as accurate and are being processed as normal, she said. Most of the applications were dated since Aug. 15, and a majority of them were from Lancaster City. Adams said the applications were collected as part of a “large-scale canvassing operation.”
I think it is safe to presume this happened in every single swing state. Additionally, by sending in mass mail-in ballots, all you are doing is allowing extra time for them to be POTENTIALLY altered, destroyed, or creating a situation that the number of votes needed for any candidate to prevail is discovered… with plenty of time left in the election cycle to change circumstances. It is not a normal way to run a free and fair election.
Former Gov. Schweiker,
As NPR’s Domenico Montanaro has put it, “just 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from a tie in the Electoral College.”
Since March 2020: I watched the government demand to put masks on my four children’s faces, and coerce most of society to take an experimental mRNA gene therapy… Subsequently the facts and history do not support those flawed positions. I also watched video of Ray Epps encourage misguided and ignorant protestors to attack police (and those creeps should have been prosecuted) yet Epps was not prosecuted expeditiously; however, grandmothers who were invited into the Capitol building that day by Capitol police were prosecuted before Epps. Can you please explain that to me? Did you read any of the discovery from Murthy v. Missouri (originally filed as Missouri v. Biden?) Seriously. Have you read any of it?
Now there are reports that 3 out of 5 (60%) of 2,500 (that’s 1,500) recent voter registrations in Lancaster County were fraudulent. How many others were missed? How many in GA, AZ, and WI? Did it exceed 44,000? My guess with 80% certainty is it exceeds 244,000 in those specific swing states. Did you think Biden was going to be the presidential candidate in June 2024? If you didn’t, you are not angry enough nor suspicious of the government enough.
Thank you for your service in PA. Please don’t try to reassure me because I’ve seen enough corruption over the past four years. Get ahead of these creeps that are queering, in the literal definition: to spoil or ruin an agreement, event, or situation, our vaunted voting process. Mass mail-in ballots are fundamentally flawed.