PITTSBURGH (TNS) — In an era of bitter political hostility and a partisan divide as deep as it has been, some say, since the Civil War, former Pennsylvania lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle are finding common ground in the name of preserving America’s democratic process.
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, and former U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, a Republican, are promoting the state’s “trustworthy” voting infrastructure as members of a bipartisan organization called the Democracy Defense Project, which seeks to build public confidence in the legitimacy of the upcoming election.
The Democracy Defense Project was formed earlier this year and says on its website that it will “publicly defend those who have sworn to uphold the rule of law and to be an active voice against any individual or organization that would look to undermine lawful election processes and outcomes.”
The project has established teams of former lawmakers — at least one Democrat and one Republican — in seven potential swing states, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Hart and Rendell have been leading the project’s outreach in Pennsylvania, along with former Democratic State House Speaker Keith McCall and former Republican Congressman Jim Gerlach.
A key issue that the Pennsylvania team is focusing on is mail-in ballots, which swung the 2020 vote for President Joe Biden. Hart, who believes that the 2020 election was fairly decided, said that the delayed influx of mail-in ballot returns — Trump had an early lead, which then fell as the mail-in ballots were counted — concerned many Republican voters because it was a brand-new system that was rolled out during the disorder of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Pennsylvania Department of State has since simplified the mail-in voting process, which “helps with the error rate,” but each county should have uniform election laws to prevent further confusion, she said. Republicans pushed to ban “drop boxes” for mail-in ballots statewide in 2022, but their proposal did not become law. Counties are not legally required to monitor drop boxes, but many of them have added security cameras and in-person officials.
“Our goal also is to get it to the point where everyone is doing the same thing, so we won’t have an election where some votes are tossed in one county that would have been counted if they were in another county,” she said. “With the [mail-in] system having been in place for a while, I expect that a lot of people drumming up those issues just won’t be accepted so much.”
Earlier this month, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley visited Pittsburgh to host a closed-door “election integrity volunteer training” session for Republican poll watchers. The event prominently featured former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who claimed in 2020 that poll workers in Philadelphia had stuffed the ballot boxes with fraudulent mail-in votes for Mr. Biden well after election day.
Rendell, who was the Mayor of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2000, said that the Democracy Defense Project is advocating to get Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots counted before the election to build public confidence in the process.
“We can’t let that happen again, and there’s no reason under good God’s earth that we couldn’t let the board start counting earlier as they do in other states,” he said. “We shouldn’t have reported our election results three or four days after the election. … That gives way to all sorts of conspiracy theories.”
Hart said that the Democrats are recruiting poll watchers throughout Pennsylvania as well, and since poll watchers cannot attempt to influence voters, the Republican training events are likely “just to get people ginned up to volunteer more than anything else.”
“If they see someone not following the proper procedure, then they’ll report it, and that’s fine,” she said. “The lawyers then would take over, but at that point, there would have to be something actually happening that is untoward. … There’s nothing that they can tell them to do as a poll watcher that’s going to change anything.”
Rendell said, “The election judges are pretty keenly aware of what poll watchers have a right to do and what they don’t have a right to do.”
One of the project’s primary backers is Mike DuHaime, an adjunct faculty member at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics who previously worked for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Arizona Sen. John McCain, according to organization representative Katelyn McNally.
Hart said that she has not spoken directly with the founder of the project, but she is confident that it is driven by people “mostly for the center” who have boosted their credibility by getting Republicans and Democrats to work together.
The Democracy Defense Project accepts donations via email that it uses to “support our work across the country in bolstering the faith, safety, security and validity of our elections process,” said McNally in a statement.
“If we thought there was any hint of the people donating money here doing it on a partisan basis, we wouldn’t let ourselves be used for that,” said Rendell.
So far, the Democracy Defense Project’s messaging has mostly come through press releases and media interviews. Earlier this month, the group’s Wisconsin team hosted a luncheon to discuss election security in the state capital of Madison with local outlet WisPolitics.
Hart said that the Pennsylvania team is developing a schedule and intends to host a similar event in Harrisburg sometime after Labor Day.
