PHILADELPHIA — The first question posed to Republicans running for governor in Pennsylvania during a forum last week: How would they “restore election integrity”?
YouTube apparently didn’t like some of the answers.
The social media video platform on Sunday took down a video of the forum, telling the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which hosted the event, it “violates our misinformation policy.”
Institute President Michael Geer said that notice advised: “Content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches change the outcome of the US 2020 presidential election is not allowed on YouTube.”
Geer, who calls that a blatant assault on free speech, filed an appeal Monday with YouTube.
A spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, did not comment Monday.
It was not immediately clear which part of event, hosted by the Institute and Philadelphia’s WPHT-AM, crossed YouTube’s line. It might have been talk of mail ballots spurring voter fraud, a common and debunked claim about the 2020 election.
Former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., claimed mail ballots are used “to steal elections.” He also dug up that often-cited prevarication about dead people casting ballots.
“We know dead people have been voting in Pennsylvania all our lives,” Barletta said, drawing chuckles from the crowd at Cairn University in Langhorne. “Now they don’t even have to leave the cemetery to vote. They can mail in their ballots.”
Seven of the nine Republicans in the primary attended, with most complaining about the 2019 state law that allowed for no-excuse mail ballots and prompted a 2020 wave of disproven claims about voter fraud.
Attacking that law has become a mainstream Republican talking point, including from the two candidates who skipped the forum but voted in favor of mail ballots in 2019 — state Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, a Centre Republican, and state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Franklin Republican.
Dave White, a former member of the Delaware County Council who participated in the forum, on Monday denounced “leftists in Big Tech trying to silence conservatives.”
Video and audio from the event are still available on the Institute’s Facebook page, WPHT’s website and at the Pennsylvania Cable Network, which aired the event on its website.
