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Commissioners: County is following law on out-of-state students’ voter registration applications

Lancaster County’s board of commissioners. From left: Alice Yoder, Chair Josh Parsons, Vice Chair Ray D’Agostino. (Photo: Tim Stuhldreher)

Lancaster County’s voter registration process complies fully with all applicable law and any suggestion to the contrary is false and misleading, the county commissioners said Tuesday.

That includes the claims made Monday in a letter (PDF) signed by Commonwealth Secretary Al Schmidt, they said. What may have been a misunderstanding was blown “way out of proportion” and the allegations made since then are a disservice to the election process, Lancaster County elections staff and voters, Commissioner Ray D’Agostino said.

The county acted “strictly in accordance with the law” and can prove it in court, Commissioner Josh Parsons said. He condemned what he suggested was “a coordinated effort by liberal groups like LNP/WITF, F&M staff, the ACLU, and now suddenly Al Schmidt” to spread falsehoods.

At issue are claims that county staff gave out incorrect information regarding voter registration procedures for individuals coming from out-of-state and inappropriately put those applications on hold.

Laura Medvic, co-chair of the nonpartisan group F&M Votes at Franklin & Marshall College, told LNP and PoliticsPA that Deputy Elections Clerk Lisa Dart told her students could not be registered to vote in Pennsylvania until they supplied documentation that any home state registrations had been canceled.

According to LNP, a student from Connecticut said that when he applied for a mail-in ballot, Dart told him he needed to cancel his voter registration in Connecticut. In the interim, his Pennsylvania voter registration, active since 2022, was put on hold.

In his letter, Schmidt referenced those incidents, as well as concerns that the Elections Office had not entered “a significant number” of registration applications into the state’s voter database until Monday, the registration deadline.

It’s through that system, known as SURE (Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors) that applicants are notified of any deficiencies in their applications. If correspondence to those voters hasn’t gone out yet, they may lose their chance before the election to challenge the county’s ruling against their registration, Schmidt said.

The commissioners said they had extensive conversations all day Monday with the Department of State, including with Jonathan Marks, the department’s Deputy Secretary for Elections and Commissions. D’Agostino said he spoke with Marks Monday night.

Marks and the other state officials agreed the county had acted appropriately, and that there were no concerns, he and Parsons said. Schmidt’s letter thus came as a shock: It was in “direct contradiction” to everything the county had heard up to then, and repeats allegations that were already debunked, Parsons said.

Moreover, LNP apparently received the letter before the commissioners did, he said: The newspaper reached out before they knew of its existence. In sending it, Schmidt acted as a “political operative,” not a nonpartisan administrator, Parsons said, calling it “stunning” and “disqualifying.”

Commissioner Alice Yoder concurred with the account of the county resolving the state’s inquiries, and emphasized the immense amount of hard work county staffers are doing in the runup to the election. Having misleading information “is really not helpful to the public and the process,” she said.

According to Parsons and D’Agostino, the Connecticut student was not told he could not register until he canceled his Connecticut registration, but rather that he should only be registered in one state. Asking questions to determine residency and registration status is legitimate and a duty under law, they said: People should vote in the state they consider home and not maintain dual registrations long-term.

As for students who haven’t seen their registrations confirmed on the state’s voter portal, that’s likely because they’re still going through the verification process, required under the Help America Vote Act, Parsons said. It’s also possible the county never received the application: Groups who conduct registration drives don’t always turn in forms promptly, he said.

On Tuesday evening, the Pennsylvania Department of State released the following statement:

“The Department’s actions were based its own independent review of voter registration application records in the SURE database.  It is the Department’s understanding that the county elections office is working to process students’ voter registration applications as required by law, which was the ultimate goal. To be clear, all applications provided to the county prior to Oct. 21 met the statutory deadline for voter registration, regardless of their processing status. The Secretary looks forward to receiving the county’s formal response to his letter by Oct. 24.”

In a statement, Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, called the commissioners account “dishonest.” Multiple people have told the ACLU they were “discouraged or prevented” from registering due to registrations in other states, he said, and the removal of the Connecticut voter from active status in Pennsylvania was illegal and is documented in the digital record.

“Their claim that they have done everything perfectly defies reality,” Walczak said. The ACLU is keeping an eye on the county, and applications now appear to be getting processed correctly, but the commissioners’ unwillingness to admit errors is cause for concern, he said.

F&M Votes did not immediately respond to requests for comment following Tuesday’s meeting.

The county must adjudicate all registration application by 10 days before the Nov. 5 election — that is, by this Saturday, Oct. 26, Solicitor Jackie Pfursich said.

Applicants who are in “pending” status have until Election Day to prove their eligibility, and can vote by provisional ballot, Pfursich and D’Agostino said. The commissioners said they do not know the number of pending applications.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to add the comments from the Department of State and the ACLU of Pennsylvania.