(Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Bulwark | Photos: Shutterstock)
ONE OF THE MOST HIGH-PROFILE grassroots organizers in the Republican party purchased a home in Beaver County, Pennsylvania in April 2024. The former steelmaking stronghold just north of Pittsburgh was a logical place for Scott Presler to put down roots. His get-out-the-vote efforts have been heavily focused on Pennsylvania, which was destined to be one of the key swing states that cycle—and, it seemed, well beyond.
Presler cast his own ballot using that address during the 2024 cycle. So did three other people outside the Presler family.
A review of voter registration records shows that GOP operatives from states across the country used Presler’s home address to cast ballots in Pennsylvania during the 2024 election. They include a consultant who voted in Florida in both 2020 and April 2025, along with a right-wing social media personality from Oklahoma.
Presler has been a leading proponent of the Republican party’s claim that Democrats have illegally registered voters. He even has attacked a homeless shelter in Pennsylvania for allegedly having 500 people registered to vote from there even though it has a 100-bed capacity. (“Imagine being confused by something this obvious. The homeless are also allowed to vote!” tweeted Daniel Pearson, a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial writer.) Now legal experts say that Presler’s use of his home as a base for out-of-state voters to cast Pennsylvania ballots raises questions about whether he committed the same acts of which he has accused others.
An individual who wishes to vote in Pennsylvania must, by state law, reside in the state and the intended election district for at least thirty days before Election Day. The address provided when registering to vote must be “considered the residence . . . in which his habitation is fixed, and to which, whenever he is absent, he has the intention of returning.” The law also makes clear that “a person shall not be considered to have gained a residence in any election district of this State into which he comes for temporary purposes only, without the intention of making such election district his permanent place of abode.”
In a statement sent to The Bulwark from a generic email account, Presler’s PAC, Early Vote Action, confirmed that Presler’s residence was used as a voting address for other individuals, but defended the practice. “Mr. Presler is a generous person who, over time, has had friends find residency in his home while actively working and residing in Pennsylvania. EVA PAC takes its voter registration compliance with law very seriously,” the statement read. “Several of the residents that once lived in Scott’s home have now since departed and found residence elsewhere in other states—yet as you’ve shown, the PA voter rolls continue to reflect their names here. It is pure madness that PA can’t clean up their voter rolls.”
But a close review of financial documents, voting records, and social media activity calls into question whether these “friends” had truly established residency in Pennsylvania as defined in state law.
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