PA's election chief front and center at Berks County Law Day event

May 17—With 2024 being a pretty big year when it comes to elections — the presidential rematch is already starting to heat up — the American Bar Association chose the topic as the focus of this year's National Law Day.

Celebrated at the beginning of May each year since 1958, Law Day is recognized to celebrate the rule of law and cultivate a deeper understanding of the legal system.

In Berks County, Law Day was celebrated Thursday at the Reading Country Club in Exeter Township during an event hosted by the Berks County Bar Association.

And in keeping with the national theme, the Berks bar association invited an expert on Pennsylvania elections to serve as the keynote speaker. State Secretary of the Commonweal Al Schmidt took part in a fireside chat, answering a host of election-related questions from Law Day committee co-chairs Allen S. Gehring, Jr. and Kelsey E. Frankowski.

As secretary of the commonwealth, Schmidt heads up the Pennsylvania Department of State, which is charged with overseeing elections in the state.

But that isn't the first election-related job Schmidt has held. Before being appointed by Gov. Josh Shapiro last year, the Philadelphia Republican was a Philadelphia city commissioner, the group that oversees that city's elections.

His service in that role during the 2020 presidential election led him to be called as a witness before the House Jan. 6 Committee in 2022.

His testimony from that day and his experience with elections in Philadelphia were the first topics he discussed Thursday.

2020 election

Schmidt said his firsthand experience was that the 2020 election was the freest, fairest and safest the nation had ever seen. It was verified by two audits, he said, that confirmed it was without any significant fraud.

And, Schmidt said, he was looking for wrongdoing.

In fact, he told the crowd, he compiled a list of 20 dead voters who apparently cast ballots from beyond the grave. When he went to the home of the first voter on the list — a woman named Margaret — she opened the door and greeted him.

"She may have been 102 years old, but she was alive," Schmidt said, explaining that another voter with the same name in the same precinct was actually the person who died.

Schmidt said he found similar stories with the rest of the "dead" voters, with all 20 proving to be alive and to have cast legal ballots. The secretary called stories about dead people somehow voting myths and fictions.

"It's the easiest thing in the world to prove," he said.

Schmidt was also asked about being given the Presidential Citizen's Medal by President Joe Biden for his dedication to running a free and fair election in Philadelphia. He said he didn't feel he really deserved the honor because he was merely doing his job.

"I did what election officials across the U.S. did," he said. "It was really a matter of accepting it on their behalf."

Changing environment

Schmidt also spoke about his efforts to visit election offices in all 67 of Pennsylvania's counties, a task he said he is about halfway through. His trips have shown him how different each operation is — a place like Philadelphia has 125 full-time election office employees while some rural counties have just one person doing it all — as well as some shared challenges they face.

One of the biggest issues Schmidt has heard about time and time again is turnover among election workers. Some of that has been caused simply by the natural cycle of workers retiring or leaving for other jobs, he said, but the increased scrutiny on elections and the threats and intimidation some workers have faced play a big roll, too.

"The environment around elections has changed over the last six years," he said, adding that election workers are no longer looked at as impartial public servants. "The referees in all this are now being treated like combatants."

Schmidt spoke about the harassment he and his family experienced following the 2020 election, saying he ended up needing around-the-clock police protection. He even shared a story about taking his kids to go sledding, saying there were detectives stationed at the top and bottom of the hill.

Whatever the cause, high turnover has resulted in a dearth of institutional knowledge and experience in election offices. To help combat that problem, Schmidt said, the department of state has created a training program to ensure that new election workers know how to properly run an election.

One of the reason that election workers' jobs have become more difficult, Schmidt said, is misinformation. The secretary said efforts to push false information to voters has become more sophisticated since 2020, with artificial intelligence fueling the fire.

As the 2024 presidential election approaches, he said, misinformation campaigns threaten to flourish, particularly on social media. Schmidt said voters need to be wary of where they get information, and do their best to discern facts and truths from fiction and lies.