Activists are challenging the eligibility of hundreds of voters in suburban Philly. Experts say the effort is legally baseless.

In what appears to be an organized effort, right-wing activists have challenged the ballots of hundreds of voters in suburban Philadelphia in recent days, claiming their targets no longer live at the addresses where they are registered to vote.

But voting rights advocates generally dismiss this effort as baseless, legally invalid and stemming from a misunderstanding of government data.

While they predict most challenges will be quickly dismissed, they say the campaign is yet another example of a loose network of Right-wing organizers billing themselves as ‘election integrity’ advocates for sowing confusion over state voting laws and cause headaches election administrators are already bombarded with misinformation about the voting process.

“Add it to the pile,” complained James O’Malley, spokesman for Bucks County, when asked about the challenges facing 191 mail-in ballot administrators in that county. He said the county elections board would review them appropriately.

The Bucks County challenges were all filed by one person on Friday, O’Malley said, although he declined to identify that person.

Officials in Chester and Delaware counties reported similar appeal efforts there — all following a similar pattern and in some cases using the same standard language.

“We are deeply concerned about the validity and intent of these challenges, the intentional abuse of the election system, and the time and energy it will take our local election officials to address them,” said Susan Gobreski, president of the League of Female Voters. of Pennsylvania.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been monitoring the effort, filers late last week began presenting “hundreds of cookie-cutter challenges” that appeared to be “nearly identical in format and content.”

Everyone claims that the challenged voter is ineligible because he allegedly matches a name in the US Postal Service National Change of Address database, indicating that someone with that name at some point signed up to receive mail on a new address to receive.

The activists say this means the voter likely no longer lives at the address where he registered to vote.

But Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said the database is notoriously error-prone and cannot be used reliably to determine whether a voter is ineligible.

For example, he said, a registered voter can try to temporarily change their mailing address for a number of reasons — such as a temporary job move, a military deployment or college — while still being eligible to vote in their home state.

“The standard for being on that NCOA list is different than the standard for being an eligible voter,” he said.

Furthermore, federal law prohibits these types of mass challenges to voter eligibility within 90 days of an election.

Nevertheless, one activist tried to deliver a stack of challenges in Delaware County last week. She was turned away because she didn’t properly fill out the required paperwork, officials there said. Activists have until Friday to try again.

Another challenged the eligibility of about 212 voters in Chester County, according to county spokesperson Becky Brain. The challenges targeted voters of all party registrations, but are heavily skewed toward registered Democrats because they are more likely to vote by mail.

It is unclear who is behind the attempt.

Walczak said the ACLU first heard of the campaign earlier this year, when it began receiving complaints from voters who had received anonymous letters questioning their eligibility.

The messages – ominously signed “a friend from Pennsylvania” – cited the change-of-address database and encouraged recipients to unsubscribe from Pennsylvania.

Officials identified the person who dropped off the challenges in Chester County as Diane Houser.

Houser, 73, of Downington, did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. But she was the lead prosecutor a lawsuit filed this summer by a group called United Sovereign Americans that questioned the accuracy of the state’s voter rolls. That case, which state election officials have characterized as frivolous and fraught with conspiracy claims, remains pending in federal court in Harrisburg.

Meanwhile, right-wing activist groups such as True the Vote and the Election Integrity Network — an organization led by Cleta Mitchell, an adviser to the Trump campaign — have previously relied on the National Change of Address database in their efforts to purge voter rolls in Pennsylvania and in other states.

Both parties have even developed software intended to help grassroots conservatives to use that data widely to identify potential targets for eligibility issues.

However, it was not clear whether the activists who initiated the recent protests in Chester, Bucks and Delaware counties were associated with or inspired by these groups.

So far, the challenges have been limited to just these three provinces. However, voting rights groups are concerned that more protests against mail-in ballots could follow before Friday’s deadline.

On Monday, the ACLU preemptively sent letters to election boards in all 67 Pennsylvania counties, informing them of the problems with the change-of-address database and the law surrounding mass voter eligibility challenges.

“The right course of action for any province facing these challenges,” it said, “is to reject them as insufficient.”