Feb. 02, 2018
HARRISBURG — House State Government Committee Chairman Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) sent the following
open letter to Gov. Tom Wolf today in response to the Department of State’s recent denial of an open records request relating to illegal voter registrations and voting by foreign nationals residing in the Commonwealth:
“Dear Governor Wolf:
“Last week, on January 26, I filed an appeal in response to your administration’s denial of my Right-to-Know request, sent on November 29, regarding the number of foreign nationals who are illegally registered to vote in Pennsylvania.
“As we are on the verge of the 2018 general election cycle, an election cycle during which you will seek re-election, when will your Department of State finally stop obstructing the public’s right to know by revealing the number of illegally registered foreign national voters in the Commonwealth?
“Any other answer falling short of ‘all records pertaining to this subject will be released immediately,’ will leave legally registered voters with no other option than to question what your administration has been hiding regarding the possibility of foreign nationals voting in recent Pennsylvania elections.
“Back in October 2016, the House State Government Committee received testimony indicating that foreign nationals had registered and, in some instances, voted in the City of Philadelphia. At that time, former Secretary Pedro Cortes acknowledged that PennDOT and the Department of State had been working to offer the ‘motor voter’ registration screens in additional languages to reduce the incidence of foreign national registrations.
“Almost a year later, in September 2017, news reports described revelations by Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt that 220 foreign nationals had registered to vote in the City of Philadelphia between 2006 and 2017 and that 90 had voted in at least one election. Subsequent to this disturbing news report, I wrote to former Secretary Cortes asking if he had directed his staff to run SURE records against PennDOT records containing an INS indicator to obtain a count of how many registered voters may be foreign nationals and, if so, how many record matches did the department find.
“Shortly thereafter, former Secretary Cortes departed with absolutely no explanation from you of the circumstances that led to his departure. Acting Secretary Torres responded to my letter and subsequently sent Commissioner of Elections Jonathan Marks to testify at a hearing on the topic. Neither the letter nor the hearing testimony included answers to the important questions I had asked regarding the number of potential foreign national voters.
“What is troubling is, I have been advised that the data run described above -- involving SURE system records and PennDOT records that contain an INS indicator -- has been done. To claim that your administration has not completed this comparison is hard to believe because it would be an admission of both incompetence and negligence.
“I have described the timeline of my ongoing effort to obtain records of foreign nationals who are illegally registered to vote in Pennsylvania to highlight how this process has languished over two election cycles and is now entering a third election cycle.
“So, to be clear, during the November 2016 general election and the November 2017 municipal election cycle, the votes of some legally registered voters of this Commonwealth could have been negated by foreign nationals who are registered and voted illegally.
“Therefore, I ask you to direct the acting secretary to release data and other records regarding the magnitude of the problem we have in this Commonwealth with illegally registered to vote foreign nationals. The integrity of our electoral process depends on it.”
Representative Daryl Metcalfe
12th District
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Media Contact: Ty McCauslin
717.772.9979
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