1. United States
2. Pa.
3. Letter

Senator McCormick, In your recent remarks supporting the SAVE Act, you cited the 2025 Chester County pollbook error as evidence that stronger federal voting restrictions are necessary. While that incident was serious and should not have occurred, it actually demonstrates why the SAVE Act is unnecessary and potentially harmful. You stated that “registered voters were turned away at the polls.” In reality, affected voters were directed to cast provisional ballots. They were not turned away. The issue was identified before polls opened, guidance was issued immediately, supplemental pollbooks were distributed throughout the day, and polling hours were extended. An independent investigation found no evidence of intentional wrongdoing and identified procedural shortcomings that the county has already begun addressing. Mistakes in complex systems are unavoidable. What matters is whether safeguards function. In this case, they did. The system adapted in real time, neighboring counties and the state provided assistance, and voters were ultimately able to participate. The initial pollbooks omitted over 70,000 registered voters, nearly 20 percent of the county’s electorate. Approximately 12,000 provisional ballots were cast, about 6.4 percent of the total vote. Even at that scale, the decentralized structure of our election system contained the damage. Imagine if a similar administrative error occurred in a federally centralized system affecting 20 percent of voters nationwide. Diversification and local control are key methods of risk mitigation. You also cited public concern about noncitizen voting and fraud. The Chester County incident involved neither. Conflating administrative error with fraud only deepens public distrust. There is no credible evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, and repeated investigations into alleged fraud have not substantiated those claims. The SAVE Act’s provisions, including documentary proof of citizenship requirements, expanded voter roll purges, and stricter identification mandates, would not have prevented the pollbook error you described. Instead, they risk disenfranchising eligible citizens, particularly seniors, military families, naturalized citizens, and voters whose documents do not perfectly align. You are correct that even a single disenfranchised voter is unacceptable. But the SAVE Act does not address disenfranchisement. It increases barriers to registration and voting, making administrative mistakes more costly and harder to correct. If the true goal is restoring faith in elections, we should focus on accurate information, adequate funding for election administration, and evidence based policy. Continued repetition of disproven fraud narratives, including doubts about the certified 2020 election results, has contributed significantly to public distrust. I urge you to withdraw your support for the SAVE Act and instead champion measures that strengthen elections without restricting access to the ballot. Protecting democracy requires expanding participation, not limiting it.