WASHINGTON — Pennsylvania's chief elections administrator says the state's elections have never been more safe and secure, even as voting procedures increasingly are questioned, prominent Republicans refuse to say they'll accept the results, and 4 in 10 Pennsylvanians doubt that the 2020 presidential election was conducted fairly.

Secretary of State Al Schmidt said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that the state now uses a paper trail and two audits to guarantee the outcome is correct.

"Elections have changed a lot in Pennsylvania in the last several years, but they've changed for the better," he said. "Elections have never been more safe and secure with a voter-verifiable paper-ballot record of every vote that's cast that is used in not one but two audits after every election to ensure the tabulated results are accurate. So, they've changed a lot."

Schmidt joined secretaries of states from three other battlegrounds — Arizona, Georgia and Michigan — to discuss the 2024 elections at a time when former President Donald Trump and his allies still insist against all evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.

In a recent Muhlenberg College poll, 43% of Pennsylvania voters said they had little or no confidence that Biden received more votes than Trump, while 56% said they were very or somewhat confident.

Schmidt acknowledged that there remain plenty of legitimate questions about updated voting procedures.

"It's all of our responsibility to answer those questions, provided those people are asking questions that they actually want to know the truth about elections," he said. "When you know more about elections, you have more confidence in them."

He isn't alone.

"We said a lot in our darkest moments after the 2020 election, when we were just inundated with lies and misinformation in an effort to overturn a valid and legitimate election, that the truth is on our side and that transparency is our friend," Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said. "So, we welcome people to ask us questions."

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, named Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner from Philadelphia, to the post in 2023. Schmidt had served as vice chair of the city's Board of Elections and rejected claims by Trump and other Republicans of massive fraud. For refusing to along with those disproven allegations, Schmidt said he and his family received death threats.

"The point of these threats is really to terrorize and is to intimidate and to try to keep any of us and our election officials at the county level and at the precinct level from doing or not doing something that is their responsibility, which is such a core foundation of our system of government," Schmidt said. "So, it's important, I think, that, you know, we treat them seriously, we take them seriously, we take steps to mitigate against them, and that our people are safe and feel safe at the end of the day."

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes called such threats "domestic terrorism."

"Terrorism is defined as a threat or violence for a political outcome," he said. "That's what this is."

And Benson acknowledged being scared when people came to her home with guns.

"But at the same time, for me, I think about, you know, the freedom fighters who stood to defend democracy in Selma in 1965," she said. "They were afraid, too, and they marched forward anyway because we have a higher responsibility to our country."

Schmidt said that the governor set up an election threat task force that allows the election workers to work together with law enforcement.

"So, should any of that ugliness that we all experienced in 2020 return, everyone knows whose role is what and how to communicate that information expeditiously so law enforcement can do its job, so our election officials can do the job that only they can do, which is counting votes in our representative democracy," he said.

House Republicans have turned their attention to the virtually nonexistent problem of noncitizens voting in federal elections, which already is a felony. Just 30 of 23.5 million ballots counted in 2016 could have been cast by noncitizens, or 0.0001% of the votes cast, according to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Trump claimed that the reason Hillary Clinton received more popular votes than him was because millions of people voted illegally in 2016.

And House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who led the unsuccessful effort to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Pennsylvania's 2020 election results on groundless allegations of voter fraud, announced legislation requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.

During a hearing earlier this month, House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis., cited a programming glitch addressed by 2017 that allowed an estimated 220 noncitizens in Philadelphia to register to vote over a 12-year period when they signed up for their driver's licenses. According to Schmidt, then a city commissioner, 90 of them cast ballots, which averages out to eight a year.

"American elections are for American citizens," said Steil, who voted against overturning the Pennsylvania election results on the House floor following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by supporters of Trump.

"And we intend to keep it that way."

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he turned away 1,600 people from registering to vote who couldn't prove they were citizens.

"So, my fellow Georgians asked me, 'Are noncitizens voting in Georgia?' I can say, 'No, they aren't,' because we've checked it," he said.

Under existing law, state elections officials already are stopping noncitizens from voting in federal elections, Benson said.

"All of us want to make sure only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections, and all of us follow the law," she said. "So, we're all committed to that, and I think it's really important for folks to know that regardless of our party affiliation, we're doing all that we can and more to ensure, as the facts show in all of our states, that only U.S. citizens are voting."

"That means that elections have been safe and secure from noncitizen voting in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and across the country," Fontes added. "So I think this is a red herring."

_____

(c)2024 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.