“Here we go again...” begins an Oct. 27 Zero Hedge article which says that 15 Republicans of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives have sent a letter to acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman (Dem.) demanding to know why 240,000 unverified ballots had been mailed out. According to Pennsylvania law, those ballots, if used, “must be set aside and not counted for the 2022 General Election unless the voter produces lD,” as the lawmakers note in their letter. Republicans have thus urged voters to hold onto their mail-in ballots and turn them in to their local board of elections on election day, presenting their ID.
Chapman has countered, arguing that voters would somehow be disenfranchised by appearing in person, although not offering further explanation. She also prepared Pennsylvanians for the expected delays in being able to count all the votes (shades of 2020?), attributing the delays to poll workers not being able to pre-canvas, or to count mail-in ballots prior to election day. She makes no mention, of course, of any delay from that flood of unverified ballots, which are a significant portion of the 1.2 million requested mail-in ballots. “So voters and the public know that when there are delays in counting, it doesn’t mean that there’s anything nefarious happening. It’s just what the law is in Pennsylvania,” Chapman said in a virtual conference, adding it would take “several days” to count and certify the votes.
Chapman characterized the advice for “voters to hold onto their mail-in ballots’ as “misinformation,” and encouraged voters to send those mail-in ballots as soon as possible. She further implied that the “misinformation” was related to reports of unspecified threats aimed at the voting process throughout the state. “She promised that her office has worked to investigate any threat made toward a free and fair election,” according to Lehigh Valley News.
“Since I’ve been in office in [sic] January, we have constantly met with the FBI and Homeland Security just to talk through what the current threat landscape is and tools that we can give our counties to make sure that they have physical security protection as well as cyber security protection,” Chapman said.
Are the 15 Republicans, in insisting upon Pennsylvania voting law on ID’s, witting or unwitting agents of foreign influence in US elections? At one time, this would have been considered a ridiculous question. Given Pennsylvania’s role in the shenanigans of 2020, and given both Chapman’s invocation of the term “misinformation” and her reference to meetings with the FBI and Homeland Security, it should be asked whether the notorious Election Security Group is involved. The Election Security Group is composed of the Department of Defense’s NSA and US Cyber Command, the FBI, DHS’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA), and the leading social media and IT platforms of Silicon Valley.
The NSA’s press release about the Election Security Group from Aug. 25 states: “According to the Office of Director of National Intelligence, Russia, China, Iran and other foreign malicious actors may seek to interfere in U.S. voting processes and influence voter perception. Such foreign activity can threaten to undermine fundamental principles of U.S. democracy and influence U.S. public sentiment.”
On cue, a “Recorded Future” report released on October 13 said that county election workers in Arizona and Pennsylvania experienced “malicious email activity” in their primaries earlier this year. The report, “Malign Influence During the 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections,” assessed disinformation campaigns from nation-state adversaries—specifically Russia, China, and Iran—and examined “disruptive influence and election security threats from U.S. domestic extremists.”
