This past week brought yet another false claim about election fraud here in Pennsylvania, which a hearty band of truth-tellers worked quickly to debunk in the face of the constant headwinds of misinformation coming from Donald Trump World. This time, it was an allegation that election officials in the Keystone State have set the stage for massive cheating in the 2022 midterms by mailing out roughly 250,000 ballots to “unverified voters.”
“No, Pennsylvania didn’t send 255K ballots to ‘unverified’ voters,” The Associated Press’ Angelo Fichera and Ali Swenson reported on Monday, responding to a report from the conservative Gateway Pundit site — which has been dinged repeatedly for spreading lies — about the mail-in voting process in Pennsylvania, which the former president then blasted out on his Truth Social site. The AP story patiently explained the facts around how some who register to vote here are temporarily tagged as “not verified” until election officials complete the review of their qualifications, which has already been done for all but 7,600 voters and should be done by Election Day.
Apparently the stagecoach or carrier pigeon or whatever carrying the AP’s fact check never made it to the 45th president’s Mar-a-Lago hideout, because one day after this thorough debunking, Trump’s Save America PAC sent out an email blitz that continued to spread the lie, headlined: “ICYMI: ‘Election Integrity Storm Brewing in Pa.’”
