A group of conservative activists says it’s found a way to get a behind-the-scenes look at Pennsylvania elections in order to root out potential voter fraud: by reviewing lists of people disqualified from jury duty and comparing the names with those on the county’s voter rolls.<\/p>\n
\nOnly U.S. citizens are eligible to serve as jurors in U.S. courts; People who are not U.S. citizens are disqualified from jury duty \u2014 one of several reasons a potential juror may be disqualified. Other reasons include being under age 18, living outside the county where they’ve been summoned for jury duty, or being unable to read, write or understand English.<\/p>\n
\nThe get-out-the-vote group Early Vote Action, which has backed “election-integrity” causes championed by President Donald Trump and his allies, has begun reaching out to county court officials in Pennsylvania with requests to access their disqualified juror records.<\/p>\n
\nThe group says it believes it can identify noncitizens who aren’t eligible to vote by comparing the two lists in each county \u2014 and potentially matching the names of disqualified jurors who aren’t citizens with names on current voter rolls.<\/p>\n
\nLed by activist Scott Presler of Beaver County, the group says its team will soon head to courthouses in Allegheny<\/a> and Butler<\/a> counties to view their so-called “non-juror” lists because administrators haven’t shared digital versions of the files in response to its request. Late last week Presler was in Philadelphia reviewing the lists in person<\/a>. But other counties, such as Chester, have shared the disqualified juror records via email, Presler recently said on social media.<\/p>\n \n \n“If this is happening in Chester County, it’s happening everywhere,” Presler wrote in his post. The Chester County non-juror list, referenced in Presler’s social media post, contains data from years 2021 to June 2026. County officials also shared that data with WESA.<\/p>\n \nIn his post, Presler also called on the U.S. Senate to pass the SAVE America Act<\/a> \u2014 the strict proof-of-citizenship voting measure championed by President Donald Trump \u2014 and he said senators such as McCormick should oppose leaving for a scheduled August recess if the chamber fails to call it up for consideration. In recent days, McCormick has appeared to be<\/a> ready to remain in Washington, D.C. to do so.<\/p>\n \n“Scott Presler has exposed more evidence that non-citizens are receiving rights reserved for American citizens. Meantime, the left continues to say there’s nothing to see here,” McCormick wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n \nAs of late July, Presler said his team had received disqualified-juror records from more than a dozen counties<\/a>, including Westmoreland and Indiana, and that it plans to request lists from each of the state’s 67 counties.<\/p>\n \nBut according to the state department that oversees Pennsylvania elections, a side-by-side view of these two directories doesn’t provide a full picture: Non-jury lists contain only names and reasons for disqualification \u2014 not addresses, dates of birth or other information confirming the identifications of the people listed \u2014 which makes the records unfit for comparison to a voter roll, they said.<\/p>\n \n“There is not enough information used [in non-juror lists] to accurately match each individual with the voter file,” said Geoff Morrow, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State. “All evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania,” he added.<\/p>\n \nLast week, state officials said one person, who had identified as a noncitizen on their voter application, had recently voted in Lancaster County<\/a>. Law enforcement is reportedly investigating the matter. And the state’s motor-voter registration<\/a> system has also come under scrutiny, as a recent state audit showed one such error made it through the registration system in 2024.<\/p>\n \nPresler did not respond to a request for comment last week. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt \u2014 as recently as July 29, in a letter to federal officials<\/a> \u2014 has repeatedly said he is confident that Pennsylvania elections are “free, fair, safe and secure” and that “only eligible voters” cast ballots in the state.<\/p>\n Allegheny, Butler records sought<\/p>\n \nThe requests for counties to share their ineligible-jurors records comes shortly after the Trump administration wrote to Pennsylvania’s top election official earlier in July, saying it had identified more than 14,000 possible noncitizens<\/a> registered to vote in the state. The administration did not explain its methodology in assembling that list of people.<\/p>\n \nThe juror-list effort also coincides with New Jersey identifying some 400 ineligible voters<\/a> who had cast a ballot \u2014 a result of a software glitch, the state said.<\/p>\n \nAs first reported<\/a> by VoteBeat, Schmidt \u2014 himself a Republican \u2014 responded to federal officials last week, urging them to share their method used to flag alleged ineligible voters.<\/p>\n \n“Past analyses of voter lists have relied on faulty methodologies that can lead to inaccurate results and false claims about the citizenship status of eligible voters,” Schmidt wrote July 29 to U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin.<\/p>\n \nAllegheny County spokesperson Beth Turnbull confirmed last week that the Common Pleas Court administrator received a request for in-person review of its disqualified-juror records, but she declined to name the requestor, saying only that “the meeting has not been scheduled yet.” Allegheny County also declined to share details about its records via email.<\/p>\n State law<\/a> requires that counties’ disqualified juror records “shall be open for public inspection,” but it doesn’t dictate how counties must comply with requests to do so.<\/p>\n \nAnd when county court administrators learn that a noncitizen received a request for jury summons, they do not allow that resident to participate, said Patricia Norwood-Foden, Chester County’s court administrator.<\/p>\n \nThe pages of noncitizens cited by Presler, Norwood-Foden said, “may seem lengthy,” but she explained that the full list \u2014 nearly 330 pages \u2014 consists of people who were “not called to report to the courthouse for jury service” because they were found to not qualify for such reasons as valid medical conditions, living outside of Chester County or being a noncitizen.<\/p>\n \n“In Chester County, our master list of prospective jurors contains 40,000 names, and we will send out between 20,000-25,000 summonses a year,” she said in an email. “There is no process in place to identify someone ineligible to serve as a juror before a jury summons is mailed. That is only determined when the individual responds to the summons and fills out the qualification questionnaire.”<\/p>\n \nA related state statute also lays bare the process by which counties mail out jury summonses \u2014 and only one of four state departments tied to elections collects individuals’ information used on a statewide potential juror list.<\/p>\n Identifying possible jurors\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a post viewed nearly 2 million times since last week \u2014 and shared by at least three U.S. senators, including<\/a> Pennsylvania’s Dave McCormick \u2014 Presler scrolled through Chester County’s non-juror list containing what he said were “65 pages of non-citizens” summoned and later disqualified for jury duty.<\/p>\n