Hans von Spakovsky: ‘Pennsylvania Supreme Court Acted in a Blatantly Political and Partisan Matter’

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court acted in a “blatantly political and partisan manner” in rulings it issued on Thursday regarding the state’s voting laws, explained Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, offering his analysis on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court acted in a blatantly political and partisan matter,” von Spakovsky said. “They acted as if they are the super-legislature of the state.” He noted the court’s decision to allow the collection of mail-in ballots up to three days after Election Day without evidence that the ballots were filled and sent before the Election Day deadline.

Breitbart News reported, “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Thursday that ballots received three days after Election Day will still be counted — even if there is no evidence they were postmarked on time.

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Democrats will use the de facto deadline extension to game the election, warned von Spakovsky.

Von Spakovsky said, “Folks will be able to wait until after Election Day see how the early totals are going, and then if they haven’t already voted their ballot, they can fill it out [and] put down the date of the election. They can basically lie and then they can go drop their envelope off in the drop boxes, which the court also legalized.”

Mail-in ballots placed in mailboxes cannot have the dates of their creation verified, noted von Spakovsky. “There’s no way of knowing that you voted after the election,” he said.

Von Spakovsky predicted, “I can guarantee you what’ll happen in Pennsylvania is that party activists — vote harvesters — will be going through neighborhoods and knocking on doors and saying, ‘Hey, did you vote your absentee ballot, yet?’, and if people didn’t, they’re going to say, ‘Oops, here, you need to fill this out and give it to us so we can go drop it off,’ and they’ll do that in any race where they are behind.”

Absentee ballots are “easy to steal and forge,” remarked von Spakovsky, highlighting the court’s change to signature verification regulations. He explained, “One of the only security measures that election officials have in place is to compare the signature on the absentee ballot with the signature from when you registered to vote, and if it doesn’t match, that’s usually a pretty good sign that somebody else filled out your ballot, and now they’re not going to be able to to do that.”

Marlow asked, “Is there any recourse, or is this thing a done deal?”

Von Spakovsky replied, “Well, it’s pretty much a done deal. I guess they could try to do an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but I suspect the U.S. Supreme Court would not step in and would just leave this in place because the rules governing elections are pretty much up to the states, and the Supreme Court isn’t going to want to get into this.”