Pennsylvania Sends Out Over 250,000 Unverified Mail Ballots - This IS NOT misinformation

CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA, UNITED STATES, November 2, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Background:
Audit The Vote PA (ATVPA) reviewed existing available public data in light of the conflicting messaging coming from Pennsylvania’s Department of State (DOS) around the numbers of unverified mail ballots and how these ballots are to be handled.

ATVPA reviewed both the Frank Ryan and Verity Vote reports, which indicated that between 240,000 and 255,000 mail ballots were sent to people whose provided identification did not match what was on record. Since these reports were released, the DOS released further messaging attempting to discredit these numbers, such as the following graphic shared on their social channels. The DOS also put out a report discrediting the reports put out by the PA legislature and Verity Vote.

Findings:

Total Unverified PA Mail Ballots
As of the 10/28/2022 Pennsylvania Mail Ballot Snapshot provided by the PA DOS, Audit The Vote PA (ATVPA) has identified 251,815 mail ballots that were sent out to individuals whose identity is recorded as not verified. These numbers fall in line with the numbers presented by
the PA Legislature and Verity Vote.

Allegheny County has more of these ballots in circulation than any other county, with 33,708 ballots being sent out to individuals whose identity has not been verified. Allegheny is followed by Philadelphia (31,248), Montgomery (28,626), Chester (21,182), Bucks (18,642), Delaware
(11,822), Lancaster (9334) and York (8760) Counties.

It appears that the bulk of these ballots were sent out between September 21st and October 13th, with more having been sent since then. Given the time between the Legislative report and this report, it appears as though the original report’s stated 240k identified unverified mail ballots falls in line with the historical data plotted graphically in the following chart.

Verified Ballots
Audit The Vote PA wanted to determine whether these totals were representative of the current state of the applicant’s verification process, given the PA DOS issued a report on 10/27/2022 where they asserted that only 7,600 applications still needed to be verified.

ATVPA compared the first mail ballot snapshot made available to the public by the DOS (09/02/2022) against the snapshot used in this report (10/28/2022) to look for applicants that originally had an unverified MailApplicationType in the 09/02 snapshot but had a verified MailApplicationType in the 10/28 snapshot.

The 09/02/2022 mail ballot snapshot shows a total of 259,561 unverified applications. ATVPA then sought to detect any applicants by IDNumber whose 09/02 MailApplicationType was unverified at the time, but changed to a verified status by the 10/28/2022 rolls. Doing so yields 7854 such changes across 58 counties, of which 7759 show as having been sent a ballot.

The results of this exercise appear to indicate that the Pennsylvania DOS incorrectly stated the total number of outstanding unverified ballots. In fact, it is ATVPA’s suspicion that the PA DOS misattributed the number of verified applications to those that still required verification given
how close their number (7600) is to these results (7759). Given that all 67 counties in Pennsylvania have outstanding unverified ballots and only 58 show any updated records in the 10/28/2022 snapshot, ATVPA has concerns as to whether all counties are aware of the verification requirements or the process to update their record within the system.

Conclusion
Given the data presented above, it is Audit The Vote PA’s conclusion that the numbers provided by the PA Legislature and Verity Vote are indeed accurate counts, and that the Pennsylvania Department of State’s messaging referenced incorrect numbers and their messaging around this verification process has been contradictory . The significance of the report presented by Frank Ryan on behalf of the PA Legislature in addition to the longer report put out by Verity Vote, is not the sheer number of such unverified ballots, but rather the conflicting guidance issued by the PA DOS. The guidance issued by the
DOS creates ambiguity around how counties must handle the legally required verification process. Several counties appear to be unaware of the verification requirement.

It is ATVPA’s conclusion that the numbers presented are accurate as of 10/28/2022 and the DOS’ own numbers do not match their own data. If there is some data the PA DOS is keeping that validates their numbers, ATVPA would request that they make that data available or update the publicly available records where this data is required to be maintained. The often conflicting guidance issued by the PA DOS has created confusion amongst the counties and their constituents, and has identified that Pennsylvania’s 67 counties to not have a shared perception of the verification requirement falling solely on their staff to perform.

The continued denials and misrepresentations of the information put out by the DOS is creating an atmosphere that breeds confusion and allows for laws to be unknowingly broken by counties during the upcoming midterm election.

See the Full Report Here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60a8b01a8bac0413e6ac618e/t/6361700df7d60b7f0ea9edd5/1667330064334/

Toni L. Shuppe
Audit The Vote PA
+1 412-573-9342
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