Clara Osburg has lived in Allegheny County since 2011 and is a regular voter — including in last fall’s municipal election. So it came as a surprise when she received a letter in late January from the county: “Your Allegheny County, Pennsylvania voter registration has been challenged on the basis of residence.”
The letter did not say who challenged her registration, why they did it or what would happen as a consequence.
“At first, I thought perhaps I had done something wrong, like misfiled my taxes or something really concerning like that,” Osburg said. She hadn’t.
Osburg didn’t know it, but she was caught up in a push by local Republicans to “clean” the voter rolls of people they think may have moved out of the county.
An informal group of dozens of activists has filed more than 16,000 challenges since the 2022 election, with plans to file another 10,000 by year’s end, even as county officials from both parties say it’s misguided.
“What I’m doing right now is trying to make these public employees do what they’re required to do by their job description under state statute,” said Anthony Golembiewski, a retired PennDOT employee turned GOP committeeman who has led the effort to challenge voters.
The effort won’t remove any names from the rolls ahead of this year’s presidential election because state law requires that several years pass before inactive voters are removed from the rolls without their consent. But some observers say it could fuel bad-faith election fraud claims during a General Election that’s expected to be rife with misinformation.
“It’s just feeding into this false narrative that there’s something wrong, that Pennsylvania’s not running its elections well,” said Marian Schneider, the senior voting rights policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union Pennsylvania. “I think it’s a much greater risk that voters are illegally removed than they are left on.”…