Pennsylvania Senate Approves Legislation to Eliminate Ballot Drop Boxes Ahead of May Primary

The Pennsylvania Senate approved legislation today to eliminate ballot drop boxes ahead of a May primary for key elected offices.

In addition to the House of Representatives seats that may be contested within a party, Pennsylvania will also be electing a new senator as well as the top three elected officials in the state which includes the governor.

Those primaries are likely to be hotly contested, especially on the Republican side of the election where there are a number of candidates.

GOP State Senator Doug Mastriano, who is also a candidate for governor, celebrated the passage of the bill, as well as another one banning so-called “Zuck bucks.”

In a significant victory for election integrity, two bills co-sponsored by Senator Doug Mastriano passed the full Senate today.

The first bill, SB 982, prohibits the use of private funds for the administration of elections. During the 2020 election, partisan liberal groups funded by Mark Zuckerberg disproportionally awarded grants to influence turnout in left-leaning counties.

The second bill, SB 1200, bans the use of drop boxes and clarifies that ballots may only be dropped off to an employee at a county board of elections office. Collecting and dropping off ballots on behalf of others is illegal in Pennsylvania. This violation, known as ballot harvesting, was proven to be prevalent in the 2020 and 2021 general elections.

“We still have much work to do to restore trust in the electoral process in Pennsylvania, but the passage of this legislation is certainly a step in the right direction,” said Mastriano. “Right to Know” documents and video evidence has proven why these bills are necessary.”

“Mark Zuckerberg and his liberal front groups claimed their grants were awarded equally for the “safe administration of elections” during COVID. But most of those funds went to things like drop boxes and satellite offices, not PPE. When adjusted for population, Democrat counties received more grant money from Zuckerberg to influence voter turnout than Republican counties received in the 2020 election. There are no public records showing the amounts that all counties requested and any conditions that Zuckerberg’s groups placed on the grants. It’s also important to note that the use of private funds for elections was never approved by the General Assembly.”

“When it comes to drop boxes, there is now documented evidence that ballot harvesting occurred at drop box locations in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Lehigh, Luzerne, and Lackawanna counties. Like private funds, drop boxes were never approved by the General Assembly in the first place. They were unconstitutionally created by the State Supreme Court.”

The bill now goes to the House of Representatives after passing on a 29-20 vote along party lines that would require voters who don’t return mail-in ballots through the U.S. Postal Service to deliver them to their county elections office instead of depositing them into a dropbox.

It is unclear if the bill will ultimately get implemented, however, as Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s spokesperson said in an email earlier this week that “Instead of continuing to pursue conspiracy theories and new ways to disenfranchise Pennsylvania voters, Senate Republicans should refocus their efforts on bipartisan ways we can continue to modernize our election system.”