FILE - Voting booths are set up at a polling place in Newtown, Pa., Tuesday, April 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

The Board of Elections has ruled against an individual who challenged 71 mail absentee ballots cast in the recent election by non-military citizens living overseas. The challenges had been filed by county resident Karen DiSalvo, who stressed that she was taking the action on her behalf and not as a member of any group.

DiSalvo, who claimed that her actions were being mischaracterized, said, “All I am attempting to do is to get the Lycoming County Office of Voter Services to comply with the law as registered voters,” DiSalvo said.

“I just want to remind you that it is the election boards that are given the task of conducting elections. So it’s not the unelected bureaucrats from the Department of State. It’s not the DNC, it’s not the RNC, it’s not the ACLU, it’s the county boards, the people who are closest to the people in the community that were entrusted with conducting our elections,” she said.

“The second point I want to make is my candidate, we won this week, right? So I could have withdrawn these challenges, and I could have received my $720 back. But none of what we have been attempting to do over the course of the last four years has been about our preferred candidate or about our preferred party. All we’ve been trying to do is to fix the issues that we see with regard to election integrity, and if we see a vulnerability in the system, or if we see that the law is not being followed, which is the case with this issue that I’m raising today, we’re attempting to fix it so that people have confidence in our elections in Lycoming County,” she said.

Prior to DiSalvo stating her case, the board, which is composed of the three county commissioners, Scott Metzger, Marc Sortman and Mark Mussina, plus Matthew McDermott, chief clerk, had heard from family members of some of the people who currently are living abroad.

County resident Gregory Smith spoke about his son, who teaches English and has lived overseas for 10 years while still maintaining a legal residence in Pennsylvania.

“My understanding of the law is that U.S. citizens who reside abroad are allowed to vote in federal elections,” Smith said.

Another county resident, Keith Rule, talked about his son who is living in Norway, in the alternative energy industry. He told the board and the standing room-only crowd at the hearing that his son remains a citizen of this country and is a registered Lycoming County voter. He retains a Pennsylvania driver’s license with a permanent address at his parents’ farm and pays income tax in this country and in Norway. He has voted in the U.S. consistently by absentee ballot while living in Norway.

“The attempted action by this group to nullify my son’s absentee vote due to his location overseas is illegal…it is a clear example of attempted taxation without representation,” Rule contended.

“This group is attempting to eliminate voting rights of U.S. citizens granted by law under our Constitution — the same constitution that affords this group the right to come in and present this challenge today. Not only is this action illegal, it is unfounded, it’s ludicrous, it’s despicable, and it’s actually obscene,” Rule stated.

DiSalvo argued that what she was doing was not obscene, and that Rule’s assertion that his son was a registered county voter was not officially registered in Lycoming County.

“That is not true and that’s the reason I am here,” she said.

“I just want to say these challenges have not been filed in bad faith. They’ve not been filed to disenfranchise voters. They’ve not been filed to keep anyone from voting. They’ve been filed because of what we perceive to be a very serious vulnerability in Lycoming County. We are allowing unregistered, unverified and unknown applicants to vote in our county,” DiSalvo said.

She also emphasized that she was not referring to military personnel stationed outside this country, but to persons who, under Federal law, are allowed to vote and are referred to as federal voters.

A federal voter, according to the state’s Department of State, is a U.S citizen who resides overseas and is entitled to vote for federal offices only as stated in the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA).

To do this, they must fill out a Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) and check one of four choices, one which states that the person is a citizen living outside this country and their intent to return is unknown.

“If you check that box, that’s the subset that are referred to as federal voters and those are the ones that form the basis of the challenges that have been filed today,” DiSalvo said.

“If you look at the top of that federal postcard application, it says voter registration and absentee ballot request. Lycoming County is processing the ballot request, but we are not registering the voter. Both are required under UOCAVA,” she stated.

DiSalvo contended that the officials in Harrisburg have characterized these individuals as federal voters, so in their system, they give them an F designation, with the word unregistered next to federal. The guidance from the Department of State, according to DiSalvo, is “contradictory” telling the 67 counties in the state not to register these voters, which is what she based her assertions on that the county is processing the applications, but not registering this category of voters.

DiSalvo told the board that there are other counties in the state where the federal voters are being registered as she said, “despite the guidance,” from the state.

“All we want is for Lycoming County to join this list,” DiSalvo said.

Replying to DiSalvo’s claims, Forrest Lehman, director of Voter Services, said that the ballots were cast by citizens who currently reside overseas, but who last resided in Lycoming County before they moved abroad. In the world of election administration, like DiSalvo had stated.

“We refer to them as federal voters because they stated on their application that they are uncertain if they will return to the state. They must still submit an application and identify themselves, and we process those applications when they come in as both a voter registration transaction and as a ballot request. It’s actually two separate processes that we have to follow for each one, and that’s true whether it’s a military voter, an overseas voter who intends to return to the US or an overseas voter who is uncertain if they’ll return to the U.S.,” he said.

“All 71 of these voters are covered by a federal law that’s been referenced…which guarantee the right to vote to military voters and their families and also to U.S. civilians who reside here in the United States and later move overseas,” Lehman said.

“That is why all of these challenges need to be rejected. This is a long-standing federal law since 1986 and it is crystal clear. U.S. civilians who previously resided in the states and who later moved overseas are guaranteed the right to vote for federal offices no matter what, based on wherever they last lived stateside before they moved abroad. States and counties are required to permit these voters to participate in federal elections and other counties have already dismissed similar challenges,” Lehman said.

The ability to differentiate these federal voters, who are limited to only voting for federal offices, from the general electorate is key.

“They need to be assigned a different status in order to differentiate them from other regularly registered voters, to differentiate them from civilians who say that they intend to return to the U.S. so that we can send them the correct balloting materials,” Lehman explained.

“… in this case, the suggestion that we should take our voters, our federal only voters who are coded in the SURE ( Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors) system with a special status to be able to track them and just register them, that would undermine both transparency and security at the same time. You cannot just register…these folks alongside everyone else, or they would get lost alongside all the other registered voters in the county, you wouldn’t be able to pick them out anymore. It’d be needles in a haystack,” he said.

“Because when we process the voter registration transactions and then the ballot transaction, the balloting materials they receive are tied back to the status on that application and their voter registration record. So if you just register them, you’re going to have registered voters who really should be federal voters, getting full ballots when they should only be getting federal ballots,” Lehman said.

When asked if each of the federal voters had been vetted and is eligible to vote in the county, Lehman explained that they have all completed the federal postcard applications at some point in the past and have indicated that they were a citizen living abroad whose last residence was in Lycoming County.

“Nobody gets into the voter registration system without an application, either the voter registration form that you folds might seen if you came in to get one, or by doing an online registration or if you’re a military or overseas voter by doing one of these. There’s a paper trail for every person that is in there,” he added.

Because of the challenge, the 71 voters were notified of the hearing concerning their ballots. Lehman said he received several calls from overseas voters in response to the challenges.

“They were upset and many of them were offended by the challenges against their right to vote,” he said.

Following deliberations, the board of elections did vote to reject the challenges. They also asked Lehman to investigate DiSalvo’s assertion that other counties used a different procedure for registering federal voters.