HARRISBURG, Pa. — Law enforcement agencies, civil defense officials and election administrators have met in Pennsylvania to coordinate how they will identify and combat election threats with the presidential election just eight months away in the battleground state, Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration said Thursday.
Shapiro created the Pennsylvania Election Threats Task Force after the state became a magnet for baseless election fraud allegations and botched lawsuits in an effort to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 victory there and oust then-President Donald Trump to power to hold.
It will be led by its top election official, Secretary of State Al Schmidt.
The task force’s mission is to design plans to share and coordinate information in the fight against threats to the electoral process, voter intimidation, and misinformation about voting and elections.
“Pennsylvania is the birthplace of American democracy, and we are working to continue to defend Pennsylvanians’ fundamental freedoms and ensure we have free, fair, secure elections this November,” Shapiro said in a statement.
Partners include U.S. Attorney’s Offices, the Attorney General’s Office, county election directors, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Pennsylvania State Police, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and the Pennsylvania National Guard.
Pennsylvania is again expected to play a crucial role in the fall presidential elections.
Trump expressed distrust of Pennsylvania in 2020, saying “bad things” are happening in Philadelphia and remain in Trump’s sights.
Trump told his supporters in December to “monitor the vote” and “go to Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta to” watch those votes as they come in.
Shapiro — who as attorney general played a central role in defending Pennsylvania’s 2020 election against Republican efforts in court to overturn it — has said administration officials were preparing for the election on legal, law enforcement and election administration fronts .
Shapiro’s Department of State is putting more resources into countering election disinformation and improving the connectivity and processing speed of the state’s digital voter registration database, which counties use every day.
It created a unit to train county election workers and sought to standardize mail-in ballots to reduce errors by registered voters, which have nevertheless led to numerous lawsuits.
The elections are probably close.
Complicating matters is a state law that prohibits counties from processing mail-in ballots before Election Day — raising the specter of a recount in Pennsylvania like the one in 2020 that provided a window into Trump-inspired conspiracy theories and false claims.
Nearly every other state allows mail-in ballots to be processed before Election Day.
In recent weeks, Schmidt — himself a former election official in Philadelphia who has recounted persistent death threats for defending the city’s 2020 vote count against Trump’s lies — has said that a wave of veteran administrators leaving county elections offices is a threat to constitutes the elections.
About 70 top election officials in the 67 counties recently left, Schmidt said Monday during a luncheon at the Pennsylvania Press Club. Inexperience leads to mistakes that are used to sow doubt about the election, Schmidt said.
Any mistake, “especially in an environment where any mistake, no matter how innocent, is so easily interpreted as intentional and malicious and intended to change the outcome of an election,” Schmidt said.
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