Targeted with death threats, GOP election overseer now works to defend voter integrity

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | October 23, 2022 | Michael Wereschagin

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Al Schmidt, a former Republican Philadelphia commissioner, remembers the day he was singled out by the most powerful man in the world.

Then came the death threats.

For months, the 51-year-old civil servant was tasked with others in Philadelphia to oversee the process that would determine who would win the 2020 presidential election.

With 253 electoral votes already collected across the country for Joe Biden, Pennsylvania's 20 were critical.

Then came the tweet from President Donald Trump saying Mr. Schmidt was being “used” to cover up voter fraud. “He refuses to look at a mountain of corruption and dishonesty.”

Suddenly, a torrent of messages aimed at Mr. Schmidt and his family members would change their lives.

The attackers threatened his wife. One of them included the names and ages of their three children, and said they “will be fatally shot.” Another sent him a photo of his house.

“What was once a fairly obscure administrative job is now one where lunatics are threatening to murder your children,” he told the U.S. Senate Rules Committee last October.

While vote counting was still underway in Philadelphia’s convention center in 2020, police rounded up two men from Virginia carrying an AR-15-style assault rifle and loaded handguns outside the building.

Mr. Schmidt has since resigned his post, but has now entered a new realm of politics.

For the past year, he and a growing number of others have been trying to convince people across the state to do whatever they can to protect a voting process that’s now under siege.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Cut-and-dry article that gets into the nuts and bolts of the mail-in-vote process in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, there is no explanation of why the Philly counting center shut down on the night of Nov. 3-4, nor is there any real exploration of the ways in which the mail-in-vote can be tampered, for example, envelope steaming to replace ballots before they get to the counting centers, USPS knuckleheads tossing out ballots from GOP-majority neighborhoods and people simply slipping in bogus ballots as they're being counted.

[Paladin2]

Centralized “Counting” Centers allow for plenty-o-mischief.

They need to be banned.

[Mlheureux]

Transference in play.

[skeeter]

This writer’s definition of “voter integrity” is no one touches the rigged system the powers that be have contrived. Anyone challenging it is a terrorist.

No sale.

[Paladin2]

Yep.

BiXiden was installed through fair and square cheating.

[WeaslesRippedMyFlesh]

All GOP election workers should be prepared for harassment.

They should all be trained and have the following:

Know their rights
Have A/V recording devices live steaming, wide shot and body cams
Be paired with another whose job it is to bolster support and be a witness
Have a prepared refusal to leave response
Have a hotline ready to call if further backup is required
Threaten to call the police and do so if necessary
Confirm ballot security protocols are followed. A/V record everything, call for immediate backup if anything suspicious is found.
Stop all after hours BS

[TexasGurl24]

Philadelphia didn’t stop counting.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-philadelphia/fact-check-philadelphia-did-not-stop-counting-votes-on-the-night-of-november-3-idUSKBN27K1JZ

Trump IMPROVED his vote share in Philadelphia over 2016.

[Freee-dame]

“ Centralized “Counting” Centers allow for plenty-o-mischief.”

I think they came into being because of Covid. Are they still being used this year?

[cuz1961]

, a torrent of messages aimed at Mr. Schmidt and his family members would change their lives.

The attackers threatened his wife.

/\

So,,. Out of this torrent

How many were charged with making the death threats and prisecuted ?

Why oh why doesn’t the reporter include that ?

I mean the FBI can find every phone at 1/6 ,,,so.....

How many ?

As many as the nooses at that nascar track bubba cried about ?

Total B.S.

[jdsteel]

“ They are part of an expanding movement of people in the country who say they are fighting to break through misinformation about the integrity of voting systems”

They should spend their energy guaranteeing the integrity of voting systems.

This article also gives a very incomplete history of Pennsylvania’s Act 77, which was unconstitutionally modified by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the Democrat Governor Tom Wolf after passage by the legislature.

It was brought up to SCOTUS in 2020, they declined to hear the case (despite Conservative Justices who wanted a hearing).

Since then it has been judged as unconstitutional by a lower Pennsylvania court and then reversed by, you guessed it, the Democratic Majority Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

It is pending a new hearing by the Supreme Court. And this entire process has been slow rolled so that it wasn’t decided prior to this November‘s election.