Pennsylvania voters in Israel face challenges from pro-Trump activists

When Traci Siegel opened her email on Sunday, she was shocked to learn that her vote in the presidential election might not count. Siegel, who lives in Israel, voted absentee in her home state in Pennsylvania, as she had many times before, in accordance with federal law requiring states to allow Americans who live abroad to vote for federal office via their last county of residence. But this year, someone she does not know paid $10 to appeal against her vote. "The Dauphin County Board of Elections received a challenge to your absentee ballot," the country's Director of Elections Christopher T. Spackman wrote. "The challenge argues that a provision of the Pennsylvania Election Code takes precedence over the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act." Siegel was informed that she could appear in person at a hearing in the state capital of Harrisburg – though she is in Israel – on Friday, three days after the election. "When I first received the challenge, I felt attacked and helpless," Siegel told Jewish Insider. "My whole life I assumed voting was a basic right, and that someone could pay a mere $10 to take that away from me seemed crazy." American Democrats in Israel referred JI to a statement from VoteFromAbroad.org, an informational website run by the Democratic Party, saying that the organization's voter protection unit is working with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and citing 3,600 PA abroad ballots [that] are being challenged in nine countries by individuals (on behalf of [Republican presidential candidate Donald] Trump). The challenged ballots are not only affecting Democrats. Republicans Overseas Israel told JI that some Pennsylvania voters who sought their help in submitting ballots also had their votes challenged. Media reports in recent days have said that the challenges come from Trump supporters claiming voter fraud, and last week, a Harrisburg court dismissed a lawsuit by six Republican members of Congress that could have undermined the process of voting from abroad. Mark Zell, vice president of Republicans Overseas Israel, said he had been concerned that these efforts would impact Pennsylvania voters from Israel. Pennsylvania is widely viewed as a must-win state in the presidential contest, and even a small number of ballots being disqualified could affect the state's results. In 2020, the winner of the presidential race in Pennsylvania was not known until four days after the election. Litigating challenges to ballots in Pennsylvania may also draw out the state's ballot-counting this year, too. "Whats going to happen with these is that, because theyve been challenged, now theyre going to be set aside, and they wont be included in the count at first," Ari Savitzky, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU, said on Tuesday. After local election boards decide later this week whether they will reject the challenge, the people who challenged the ballots then have two more days to appeal the decision. "Because federal law is crystal clear here, I have every reason to expect that these folks' ballots will eventually be counted, but unfortunately, theres going to be delay in that because of this abuse of this challenge process," Savitzky added. The challenge against Siegel's vote was submitted by Aimee Lighty, a licensed therapist in Pennsylvania with a very small and apolitical social media footprint, according to the email Siegel received from the Dauphin County Board of Elections. Lighty did not respond to messages from JI about the challenge, but her name has been connected with at least one other challenged ballot. Lighty's challenge of Siegel's ballot appears to be consistent with what the ACLU described as mass-produced challenges that claim voters should not be allowed to vote because they are outside in the United States and are not registered to vote in Pennsylvania, according to a letter from the ACLU to Pennsylvania county solicitors . The ACLU noted that nearly 50 years ago, Congress enshrined overseas U.S. Citizens continued right to vote in the district in which they last lived, but only for federal elections ... While these voters may not be technically registered to vote in Pennsylvania for purposes of state elections, federal law indisputably protects their right to vote for federal offices. The proper course of action for any county receiving mass challenges to these federally qualified overseas voters is to summarily reject the challenges as both procedurally and substantively deficient, the ACLU wrote. The Pennsylvania State Department told The New York Times that the challenges were made in "bad faith" and "are based on theories that courts have repeatedly rejected" in an attempt to "undermine the confidence in the Nov. 5 election." Many of the challenges were submitted by Pennsylvania state Sen. Jarett Coleman, an attorney named Karen DiSalvo who represented the Republican members of Congress in their lawsuit, and Charles Faltenovich of a group called PA Fair Elections, a CNN report found. About 500,000 U.S. citizens live in Israel, according to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Trump is the most popular presidential candidate in Israel by a wide margin, according to recent polling , and voting patterns by Americans in Israel are expected to reflect that view. Representatives of both parties in Israel have told JI that Republican candidates received most of the votes from Americans in Israel in recent decades. In September, Trump posted on his Truth Social website that the Democrats are getting ready to CHEAT! The Republican candidate claimed, without evidence, that his opponents planned to submit overseas ballots without any citizenship check or verification of identity, whatsoever. (Foreign interference?) Methods of verifying absentee votes vary by state , but most require a Social Security number or valid state driver's license, as well as a valid signature checked against voter registration. Days after Trump's post suggesting Democrats abroad sought to commit voter fraud, the Trump campaign released a video in which the candidate appealed to U.S. citizens living in Israel to vote for him because no one in history has ever stood with Israel and the Jewish people like I have." In addition, Trump released a video appealing to overseas voters worldwide, promising to end double taxation on U.S. citizens living abroad. Efforts to get out the vote in Israel continued through Tuesday, with Family Research Council and prominent Evangelical pastor Tony Perkins campaigning for Trump with settler leader and Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan in Hebrew and English , emphasizing opposition to a two-state solution ceding the West Bank, the biblical heartland where most of the stories in the Bible occurred. Jewish Insider senior national correspondent Gabby Deutch contributed reporting.