State Lawmaker Wants To Repeal No-Excuse Mail-In Voting In Pa. Used By 2.6 Million Pennsylvanians This Fall
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- For months, President Donald Trump has called voting by mail a fraud.
Now a Republican state representative near Altoona wants to repeal the law that allows no-excuse mail-in voting in Pennsylvania. Over 2.6 million Pennsylvanians voted by mail in November during this pandemic.
Months before the pandemic, the Republican Pennsylvania House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to expand absentee voting to all voters in the state.
Millions opted to vote this way, but Pa. Rep. Jim Gregory, a Blair County Republican who voted for this a year ago, now wants to repeal it.
"By introducing legislation to repeal it, we're going to go back and say what we need to do is go back to negotiate and understand what worked in this election and what did not work," Gregory told KDKA political editor Jon Delano.
Gregory says his constituents are not happy with all these mail-in ballots.
"Specifically, in my district right now, so many people have no faith in the election process in Pennsylvania," he said.
Gregory is also upset at how the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and state officials interpreted the new law.
"What I didn't vote for was what the state Supreme Court and the secretary of state did, and the administration did, to change the rules of what we passed with Act 77 to include curing of ballots, the additional three days," Gregory said.
"All the things they changed, I did not vote for," Gregory added.
"This was the safest and most legitimate election in the history of this country," says Pa. Rep. Dan Frankel, a Squirrel Hill Democrat who voted for the bill last year and continues to support voting by mail.
Frankel rejects notions of fraud and says Pennsylvania is just catching up to the rest of the nation.
"This isn't anything radical. Twenty other states have been doing this for years and years and years," said Frankel. "When you take a look at how popular it was – how many voters utilized it – it was overwhelmingly popular."
Frankel supports some changes like allowing mail-in votes to be counted earlier so you have a final result on Election Night.
But as for a total repeal of mail-in voting, Frankel adds, "It clearly reeks of partisanship, and I don't think it's going to get anywhere at the end of the day."
