Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State resigned on Monday just a few months after she allowed severe cases of voter fraud to go on during the 2020 Presidential Election. Kathy Boockvar (D) has served as the state’s Secretary of State for just over two years. Throughout her time in office, she faced multiple scandals.
The reasoning behind Boockvar’s resignation is that she failed to advertise a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed victims of sexual assault to have an extended period of time to file civil actions against their abusers. The original bill passed with nearly full approval in both chambers of the state legislature in April 2019. However, Boockvar failed to have the bill advertised before the 2020 election and now the future of the amendment is uncertain.
Boockvar’s term as Secretary of State will be solely remembered by the uncertainty of the 2020 Presidential Election. Leading up to the election, officials in Pennsylvania allowed several measures to make voting by mail more accessible due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of these measures was Act 77 in October 2019. Act 77 would allow Commonwealth residents to vote by mail up to 50 days before an election. Previously, you could only vote by absentee ballot and you had to provide reasoning for why you were voting by absentee ballot.
Another election law that was allowed just weeks before the 2020 Election was the decision on signature verificiation. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court (that is 5-2 majority Democrat) ruled in mid-October that election officials could not throw out any ballots based on signature verification. This would allow for large amounts of mail-in ballots to be counted without any verification for several days after the Election.
In late November, Pennsylvania state officials held a public hearing in Gettysburg to allow testimonies from those who had witnessed various cases of voter fraud. Well over a dozen people testified showing clear evidence that fraud went on in Pennsylvania during the 2020 Election. Many who testified said they were not allowed into polling locations on Election Day as well as blocked from viewing the counting of votes days after. Data scienties that testified also questioned the amount of vote spikes in the days following the election.
You can watch the full public hearing here: