Pennsylvania ballot challenges not evidence of vote rigging

"Trump cheated," says a November 6 X post with more than 45,000 shares.

The post includes screenshots of an email from an election official in central Pennsylvania's Dauphin County. The message says someone challenged the user's absentee ballot because they were not registered or entitled to vote, and that officials were scheduling a hearing to determine whether her selections would be counted.

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Screenshot from X taken November 7, 2024

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The same screenshots and claims of cheating have circulated elsewhere on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Tumblr.

Conservative activists and lawmakers submitted around 4,000 challenges to Pennsylvania voters, most of whom cast their ballots from overseas, accusing them of not meeting residency requirements.

Most challenges center on debunked theories that state officials failed to verify overseas voters were US citizens and had ties to Pennsylvania. A federal judge on October 29 threw out a similar lawsuit brought by six Republican members of Congress, saying they were "phantom fears" (archived here).

Matt Heckel, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, said the last-minute objections were made in "bad faith" and that officials are "confident" county boards of elections will dismiss the hundreds of challenges still pending.

"Additional challenges came just hours before the filing deadline and seek to disenfranchise overseas federal voters, who are entitled under federal law to vote for federal offices," Heckel said in a November 7 email.

The American Civil Liberties Union also sent a letter on November 3 to 67 county solicitors in Pennsylvania urging them to throw out complaints against overseas mail-in ballots, saying they would be "unlawful" (archived here). State law prohibits filing bad-faith and "frivolous" ballot challenges (archived here).

However, the challenges are not evidence of fraud affecting Trump's victory in Pennsylvania, which he had won by more than 130,000 votes as of 2015 GMT on November 7 (archived here).

"Pennsylvania counties ran a safe and secure election," Heckel said.

Election was 'fair'

Rachael Bellis, a former Dauphin County resident now living in the United Kingdom who originally posted the claim, told AFP she believes Pennsylvania's election process was "fair."

"I do want to be clear that I am not contesting the overall result of the election -- as many on my thread are either jumping on or implying," she said in a November 7 email.

In a follow-up X post, Bellis shared an email from county officials saying her vote would be counted because the person who issued the challenge had withdrawn their complaint. Bellis shared the same messages with AFP.

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Cartogram showing electoral college votes won by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election, by state, as of November 7, 1045 GMT (AFP / Lise KIENNEMANN, Samuel BARBOSA)

However, she added: "I do have suspicions and think all allegations of voter disenfranchisement should be investigated, and I do think the law allowing these challenges to take place makes no provision for bad faith challenges."

Harris won more than 52 percent of the vote in Dauphin County, according to an unofficial tally (archived here).

AFP has debunked other claims about the 2024 US presidential election here.