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PA Supreme Court Lets Voters Who Botched Their Mail-In Ballot Cast Another One

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In a split decision Wednesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted voters who improperly cast a “naked” mail-in ballot permission to cast a provisional ballot at their polling place. Three of the seven justices offered dissenting opinions.

To preserve privacy, mail-in ballots are returned in two envelopes: an inner, secrecy envelope, and the outer mailing envelope. Pennsylvania election code requires voters to sign their name and write the date on the outer envelope.

This case started in Butler County where two voters, Faith Genser and Frank Matis, voted by mail in the 2024 primary election. Each put their completed ballots directly inside the mailing envelopes, and did not use the secrecy envelope.

That is a naked ballot. It matters because the name on the exterior of the ballot and the ballot choices can both be seen by the person opening the exterior envelope, destroying the secrecy. It is an incomplete ballot and is not counted.  

When the Butler County election board received these ballots, the envelopes were scanned by a machine that measured their dimensions and predicted that both lacked a secrecy envelope, court papers said. Their votes were cancelled for lacking a secrecy envelope, and that was noted in the statewide computer system. This triggered the state computer system to send an automatic notice from the Department of State to each voter involved.

The notice tells the voter his or her ballot will not be counted due to lack of a secrecy envelope.

“After your ballot was received by

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Georgia Audit Finds Nine Noncitizens Voted In Past Elections

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Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Wednesday that an audit of Georgia’s voter rolls found 20 noncitizens registered to vote — and nearly half of them reportedly previously voted in an election.

Raffensperger said the state found 20 noncitizens on its voter rolls after it launched a citizenship audit this summer. The audit also discovered that “nine of those 20 noncitizens cast ballots in the past, while the other 11 were registered but never actually voted,” according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

The secretary said the state used records from “county courts, the Georgia Department of Driver Services, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.” Gabe Sterling, the chief operating officer for the secretary’s office, said the 20 noncitizens on the rolls were discovered after they signed affidavits confirming they were not citizens when seeking dismissal from jury duty. The individuals came from seven Georgia counties: Fulton, Cobb, Bibb, Clayton, Henry, Gwinnett, and DeKalb, Sterling said.

Raffensperger said all 20 voter registrations were canceled and were “being referred to local prosecuting law enforcement.”

The state also discovered 156 people whom Raffensperger says “require[s] additional human investigation” into their citizenship status. Raffensperger said his office opened a “case file into these individuals.”

Several other states have also discovered noncitizens on their voter rolls in recent weeks.

Oregon’s secretary of state recently announced that the state similarly found nine noncitizens who had voted in past elections, along with “more than 300 noncitizens [who] were erroneously registered to vote,” as my colleague

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Iowa Identified 87 Self-Reported Noncitizens Who Have Already Cast Ballots In Elections

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Iowa’s elections chief revealed on Tuesday that his office has identified 87 individuals who self-reported they are noncitizens after already casting ballots in elections.

“It is absolutely critical that eligible citizens are able to vote and we are not disenfranchising any eligible voters,” Secretary of State Paul Pate said in a statement.

According to an office press release, the 87 foreign nationals were discovered as part of a regular audit of the state’s voter rolls. The analysis also uncovered 67 self-reported noncitizens who registered to vote, but did not cast ballots in elections. The names of these individuals are being turned over “to the Iowa Attorney General and the Iowa Department of Public Safety for potential prosecution,” according to Pate.

The audit additionally found 2,022 people “who have self-reported they are not citizens and voted or registered to vote after self-reporting.” Pate Communications Director Ashley Hunt Esquivel reportedly said, as described by the left-wing Iowa Capital Dispatch, “there may be individuals in this category who have been naturalized as U.S. citizens since reporting their status to the Iowa [Department of Transportation], and legally eligible to vote.”

Pate indicated in the release that his office has provided instructions to county auditors to ensure only authorized U.S. citizens have their votes tabulated in the 2024 election. County auditors are to direct their poll workers to “challenge the ballots” cast by these individuals should they vote in the November contest. According to the secretary, these voters, whose eligibility remains in question, will

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Yes, Kamala Harris Really Is That Stupid

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There’s a popular conception that politicians at the federal level, especially the leaders of the major parties, must possess a high degree of cunning and intellect. After all, only the most Machiavellian schemers could navigate the cutthroat labyrinth of party politics to the highest offices in the Capitol or the White House, right?

Oftentimes, people strain, sometimes desperately, to attribute complex machinations and ulterior motives to the current chaos of the American political landscape. It’s part of a senseless hope that there is some deeper meaning to be found in the inane ramblings or narcissistic posturing of our political class.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty displayed this sentiment Monday, seemingly struggling to make sense of Kamala Harris’ rise to power and the very real possibility that she could be the next president despite the mountain of evidence that she is, indeed, a simpleton.

“There’s this nagging complication — if Kamala Harris is as stupid as her critics claim, why does she have the Democratic presidential nomination and a roughly 50–50 shot of being the first female president in U.S. history?” Geraghty posted on X.

There’s this nagging complication — if Kamala Harris is as stupid as her critics claim, why does she have the Democratic presidential nomination and a roughly 50–50 shot of being the first female president in U.S. history? Do you know how many ruthlessly ambitious Democratic men…

— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) October 21, 2024

“Do you know how many ruthlessly ambitious Democratic men and women have desperately

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