Evening Edition: A Look At Election Laws And Concerns In Battleground Pennsylvania
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I'm Brett Baer. I'm Rachel Campos-Duffy. I'm David Asman, and this is the Fox News Rundown. Monday, November 4th, 2024. I'm Tonya J. Powers in Washington, D.C., where the Harris campaign is holding its election night event on Tuesday. It's election eve, and both candidates are giving the battleground state of Pennsylvania some extra focus.

Also getting some extra attention, election officials there who say they're confident that despite some foreign and domestic bad actors, every resident will get a chance to cast their vote without any obstacles. We're going to make sure that every voter knows that their vote is going to matter in Pennsylvania. But some of that attention is bad, and those are foreign actors seeking to undermine confidence in our electoral results. This is the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. ♪♪

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Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are making last-minute campaign stops in Pennsylvania, offering voters their last messages before they cast their ballots. Harris will be making some celebrity-studded stops in Pittsburgh, Allentown, and Philadelphia to close out her campaign in a key state she needs for victory.

Donald Trump is also campaigning in Redding following the Madison Square Garden rally where disparaging comments were made about Puerto Ricans. Nearly 600,000 Latinos live in the state of Pennsylvania, many of Puerto Rican descent. Also under the microscope, Pennsylvania's unique election laws that often give way to election fraud claims. But election officials in the state say while they've got concerns about foreign actors spreading disinformation, they remain confrontational.

Pennsylvania voters will be able to cast their votes? It's a very good question and one we get a lot. Joining us today to discuss the election process in Pennsylvania is Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania's Secretary of the Commonwealth, who has had years of election experience with both parties in that state. Pennsylvania, unlike a lot of other states, can't begin processing mail ballots until 7 a.m. on election morning. Other states can't

Blue states and red states can begin that process days, if not weeks in advance. But with us, it can't begin until 7 a.m. And that was certainly an issue in 2020, what it seemed like Pennsylvania was taking forever. There have been a couple of changes since 2020.

Counties have acquired additional equipment to help process mail ballots. They've acquired more experience than they had before, which is the first time we ever dealt with that volume of mail ballots. And fewer voters are voting by mail in Pennsylvania, although widely embraced. Certainly fewer during that COVID environment. So new equipment, more experience, fewer votes to count. And you've already got my second question. So...

You've done this a time or two. Concerns over the election interference by foreign actors. We've seen, you know, a lot of stories about this, a lot of concern, you know, nationally, as well as different states. This has only grown since 2020. How worried are you about the integrity of the actual, you know, the ballot boxes, the system in general, you know, being targeted by foreign actors?

I'm not worried about the integrity of the system because I know the checks and I know the balances, and I've run elections in Pennsylvania, the largest county, for 10 years as a Republican election commissioner of Philadelphia. But

What we've absolutely seen is an effort from domestic and particularly foreign bad-faced actors to undermine confidence in our electoral process. As we saw in Pennsylvania just a few days ago, there was a video being shared that was purported to be an election worker in Bucks County, right outside of Philadelphia, carrying up ballots for one of the candidates.

The Department of Homeland Security and other federal partners, including the FBI, identified that as having a foreign source and being spread by foreign sources and domestic ones as well. Anyone who has experienced running elections would be able to tell from a mile away that that was a fraudulent video. But most voters and viewers and listeners don't have that benefit of experience. So when these things do occur, it's important that we call them out.

and that we condemn them and make sure that voters are not deceived by efforts to undermine their confidence in our system of government. That kind of brings me to the idea of misinformation and disinformation surrounding elections, not just in your state, but nationally. It has become...

sadly, almost commonplace at this point. What are you doing, if anything, that you can do to combat the misinformation and the disinformation around elections in Pennsylvania? You know, it's been interesting because different states have taken different approaches. Some, you know, fight back and forth all day on legacy Twitter with comments and quote tweets and all the rest. Other states ignore it entirely.

In Pennsylvania, we've decided to monitor it closely to see what sort of things are being spread that are lies about elections, whether they're intentional or not, and then to make sure that we're always sharing the truth in parallel to those untruths. And the Shapiro administration has worked hard to make sure that we can communicate clearly

whether it's through all social media platforms or all media platforms, to voters directly so that they know the truth about elections in Pennsylvania and that they are free, fair, safe, and secure. Do you have any indication as to how Pennsylvania voters feel regarding their faith in the voting system there? Have you been talking to people or hearing comments from folks? You know, I was an elected official for 10 years, so I always...

enjoy hearing from people directly. I feel like it informs you a lot about what's on people's minds and what might be concerning them. So I think that has a very important role in understanding, especially when people are being sort of deceived about the things that are out there. But I mean, it is a concern. Pennsylvania, it's

It's no secret it's the biggest swing state in the United States. So it's receiving a lot of attention. A lot of attention is good, right? You want to make sure that every voter knows their vote is going to matter in Pennsylvania. But some of that attention is bad. And those are exactly what you just talked about, which are foreign actors seeking to undermine confidence in our electoral results.

I know you've been in contact with the county election directors across your state. What's their feedback as far as any concerns that they're dealing with? And that includes threats, anything like that, which I kind of want to talk about a little bit more in depth in a second. But what feedback are you hearing from the county elections folks?

You know, even though I ran elections for 10 years in one of our counties, like I mentioned, I didn't want to assume that I knew every concern faced by voters and election directors in every county. So I've now visited all 67 counties to sit down with their election directors to hear from them.

how the Pennsylvania Department of State can be more supportive of their efforts and to really learn from them to make sure we're informed by that and provide whatever support we possibly can. So every vote is precious in Pennsylvania, no matter what county it's

It's cast in. It's not just big cities and it's not just rural counties. It's every vote cast in every election. So I really, really value that experience and really benefited from hearing from them directly about the challenges that they face in their counties. Our counties are very different, just like in every other state where you have different challenges in different counties.

But voters' rights are the same no matter where you are. And our county partners and the Shapiro administration are committed to making sure that every vote cast by an eligible voter on or before Election Day is counted. We've been speaking to Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania's Secretary of the Commonwealth. Following this short break, he shares his thoughts on whether or not he's ever seen widespread voter fraud in his state.

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Okay, just to be clear, was there any evidence of widespread voter fraud, dead people voting, etc., found in Pennsylvania in 2020?

No. And I was a Republican election commissioner in Philadelphia for 10 years, and I investigated hundreds of allegations of voter fraud, whether it's people voting for dead people or double voting or noncitizens or all the rest. So and I produced a report about each one of these sort of studies. For example,

people voting for dead people, easiest thing in the world to prove if it's occurring. You know when someone died and you know when a vote is cast. And that's how we know how very infrequently that occurs, because that record is so easy to establish, because you're dealing with two points in time that you can compare. Or the non-citizen issue, which I worked on for years as a Republican commissioner in Philadelphia. And when it

did occur, however infrequently, every vote matters. And even if it's unintentional, when somebody casts a vote that isn't eligible to cast a vote, it does some damage to the system. So we worked with the Pennsylvania Department of State in 2017, and Pennsylvania, ahead of all these other states that are

sort of embracing this issue now, dealt with this issue years ago and dealt with it responsibly to make sure that U.S. citizens who are registered to vote were not disenfranchised by an effort to find very few non-citizens or to prevent very few non-citizens who are registered to vote from voting.

As I mentioned a minute ago about the threats, there have been numerous stories that have been published in the last four years about threats to people who run elections in different states, poll workers, from there on up to people like you who run statewide elections. You testified as a Philadelphia commissioner before the House January 6th committee that you had received threats that included members of your family. Is this something you're still having to deal with now as secretary? And if so, has this increased during this campaign season?

Well, there have been a couple of lessons learned from 2020. And one of those is that the environment has changed a lot, as you've mentioned. So prior to 2020, we were not

dealing with threats of violence or intimidation, or certainly nothing like this. So the Shapiro administration organized an election threat task force made up of federal, state, and local partners and election administration partners, so that if any of that ugliness returns, everyone knows what everyone else's responsibilities are. There are open lines of communication. So if the

there are any threats of violence or intimidation, law enforcement can focus on its job and our election workers can focus on their job in a very time-sensitive environment, which is counting our voters' votes in a democracy. Have you had any of the countywide folks say, you know, I really am hesitant to do this because of threats or because of, you know, potential for that? It

It's been very multi-causal, but we've experienced a lot of turnover. More than 80 senior level election officials at the county level have left since 2020. So there's been a lot of turnover. And that's not all because of how the environment's changed, but that's certainly been a contributing factor. So that's why the Pennsylvania Department of State organized a training unit

led by an experienced election director so that we can help train new election officials at the county level to make sure they know everything they need to know in order to run a smooth election that's free, fair, safe, and secure in their county. And despite that turnover, I think we've succeeded in that effort.

You mentioned there were several reasons for the turnover. What are some of those? I'm just curious.

Well, obviously, the threat environment that you mentioned is one of them. Others are that elections have changed a lot, certainly in the last five years, but they've changed for the better. There's a voter-verifiable paper ballot record of every vote that's cast by a voter in every election that's used to tabulate the results and then used in two audits after every election to ensure those results are accurate.

but they have become a lot more complex. And people who have worked in election administration for decades, I think many of them, and I don't blame them, have become fatigued by all these changes and have decided, well,

when they're eligible to retire, that they're going to take advantage of that. And I certainly don't blame them for it. They've done their sort of public service. But I think there's several reasons why we've had that turnover. But our job is to make sure that the people filling those vacancies are prepared to make sure that they can provide voter services and every voter can have their vote counted in Pennsylvania.

Is there anything else that I didn't cover that you would like for people across the country to know about Pennsylvania's election system? You know, I would just say there's so many lawsuits and presidential elections in particular can become so contentious and as we've seen recently can get ugly. But I think elections are really something we should celebrate. And I would encourage voters to sort of

Tune out all that noise and don't let anyone dissuade you from making your voice heard. And the best way for you to make your voice heard is to cast your vote and have confidence that in Pennsylvania, your vote will be counted. This sounds kind of like a calling for you. You seem to really, really, you're all in on this. I've never, I don't think I've ever talked to an elections official who is this, you know, like,

ready to make sure everybody's got a good election day. That's interesting. It's obviously a serious commitment for me as it is for everyone who works at the Pennsylvania Department of State. And if I can mention our families, right? These are not eight-hour days at this point. These are seven days a week. They are night and day.

So it's a big commitment. And it's not just a commitment by us to do a good job. It's a commitment because we really believe in this mission, regardless of who wins and who loses, regardless of what party you're in, that you can cast your vote and make your voice heard.

Well, thank you for what you do there in Pennsylvania. And I'm sure a lot of people in Pennsylvania are also very grateful for you making sure that everything is going to go as smoothly as possible on Tuesday. Thank you. Thank you, Tanya.

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