HARRISBURG — Spotlight PA is reporting… Gov. Tom Wolf on Tuesday revealed his wife, First Lady Frances Wolf, dropped his mail ballot off for him, a violation of Pennsylvania election law. State law currently prohibits, in most cases, anyone other than the voter from returning a mail ballot, an act punishable by up to one year in prison, a fine of up to $1,000, or both.
On the “KDKA Radio Morning Show,” host Kevin Battle asked Wolf if he visited the polls to vote in person during Tuesday’s municipal election. “I didn’t show up in person at the polls. We voted a couple weeks ago, actually,” Wolf said. “My wife actually dropped it off personally two weeks ago, so it’s there.” Wolf did not say where his wife dropped off his ballot. Elizabeth Rementer, a spokesperson for Wolf, said only “it was an honest mistake.”
Pennsylvania law does allow voters with disabilities who aren’t able to return their own ballot to designate someone else to do it for them. A voter can also designate a representative to return an emergency absentee ballot. But in all other cases, voters have to mail or bring their ballot to an elections office, satellite location, or drop box themselves. Kyle King — a spokesperson for the district attorney in York County, where Wolf lives — said as a general policy, the office does not comment on the existence of an investigation. He also would not say whether the office had received a complaint about how Wolf voted. The violation came to light after state Rep. Seth Grove (R., York), who l
File Photo 2016
HARRISBURG — Spotlight PA is reporting… Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed a Republican rewrite of Pennsylvania’s Election Code on Wednesday, making clear his party’s opposition to stricter voter ID requirements and setting up a potential showdown on the issue at the ballot box. In addition to requiring voters to show ID during every election, the bill would have created early voting, instituted new security rules for drop boxes, and allowed voters to fix mail ballots with missing signatures. GOP lawmakers said the legislation provided extra security measures while also expanding access, but Wolf said it would create new barriers for voters. “This bill is ultimately not about improving access to voting or election security, but about restricting the freedom to vote,” Wolf said in a statement. “If adopted, it would threaten to disrupt election administration, undermine faith in government, and invite costly, time-consuming, and destabilizing litigation.”
The governor’s rejection of House Bill 1300 was expected, but it dealt a blow to county election officials caught in the partisan battle of voting reforms. They’ve been asking for two specific provisions: the ability to process mail ballots ahead of Election Day, and moving up the deadline to request a mail ballot. Passing those two measures, officials said, will fix a majority of the issues that arose last November, when election workers were running in-person and mail elections simultaneously during a pandemic. While the 150-page bill — dubbed the Voting Rights Protection Act — included election officials’ two priorities, it also contained numerous proposals Democrats said would disenfranchise voters, such as limiting the use of drop boxes and requiring signature verification on mail ballots.
“This is Pennsylvania’s voter suppression effort rearing its ugly head,” Sen. Vincent Hughes (D., Philadelphia) said on the Senate floor before the chamber approved the bill Friday. “This is Pennsylvania contributing to the national state-by-state effort to suppress the vote.”
Rep. Seth Grove, a York County Republican who wrote the bill, said it would restore confidence in elections through enhanced security measures. Those include requiring voters to present an ID each time they vote — as opposed to only when they vote at a new polling site, as is currently law — requiring bipartisan teams to check the IDs of people returning ballots at drop boxes, and mandating that ballot-scanning machines have signature verification capabilities. The measure also included curbside voting for those who have difficulties going inside a polling place and increased poll worker pay.
