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RITE PREVAILS IN PHILADELPHIA – COMMISSIONERS REINSTATE ELECTION INTEGRITY AUDIT TO PREVENT DOUBLE VOTING

Washington, D.C. – In a stark reversal, Philadelphia’s City Commissioners voted 2-1 this morning to protect the integrity of today’s election by reinstating poll book reconciliation. The Commissioner’s decision was spurred by litigation supported by Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) and undoes a decision made just days earlier to scrap the commonsense and legally required procedure that guards against people voting more than once.

“Conducting poll book reconciliation will safeguard Philadelphia’s ballot box from duplicate votes,”

said Derek Lyons,
President and CEO of Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE).

“Any duplicate vote undermines the integrity of the system. We know that double voting occurs and that it happens for various reasons, good, bad, ugly, and illegal. Conducting the audit will protect the integrity of the count. As voters increasingly opt to vote by mail-in ballot, it is more critical to audit the ballots to guard against double voting.”

This audit, known as poll book reconciliation, matches up absentee/mail-in ballots received against in-person votes to protect against someone voting by mail and in person. This simple process identified 40 such duplicate ballots during the 2020 election in Philadelphia, and it is becoming increasingly crucial as absentee/mail-in voting grows more popular.

Lyons added, “If there are delays, only the Commissioners are to blame. The Commissioners initially dismissed RITE’s many attempts to urge them to reinstate poll book reconciliation and upgrade to electronic poll books. They ignored a letter, public comment, and even advance notice of the lawsuit. After the lawsuit was filed, the Commissioners derided it as frivolous and disclaimed any obligation to protect the City’s ballot box from duplicate votes. And worse, the Democrat Party argued in court to leave the ballot box vulnerable to double voting.”

The judge in the case disagreed with the Commissioners and the Democrats. In her November 7th order, the judge observed:

The Commissioners’ conduct would “reduce rather than improve” the administration of the election.

The Commissioners’ “decision to remove” poll book reconciliation was “an erroneous and reversible exercise of administrative agency discretion.”

The Commissioners “unwisely discounted the inherent deterrence of fraudulent voting” that could be attributed to poll book reconciliation. And the Commissioners “unwisely discounted the inherent fraud detection value” created by poll book reconciliation.

The Commissioners “failed to consider the encouragement of fraudulent voting that could reasonably result from [their] late date public announcement of removal of the previously publicly touted and employed” poll book reconciliation process.

RITE will continue to closely monitor election law administration in Philadelphia. Learn about the latest developments regarding election integrity by following RITE on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Restoring_USA

Co-founded in 2022 by National Finance Chairman Steve Wynn, Senior Advisor Karl Rove, and Chairman of the Board Bobby R. Burchfield, RITE is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the rule of law in elections. Working with some of the finest lawyers in the country, RITE supports faithful enforcement of valid, properly enacted and adopted laws and regulations that promote secure, efficient, and accurate elections throughout the United States. 

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Andrew C. McCarthy

Bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy is a contributing editor at National Review, a senior fellow at National Review Institute, and a Fox News contributor. He is a former Chief Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York and led the terrorism prosecution against the “Blind Sheikh” (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven other jihadists for conducting a war of urban terrorism against the United States that included 

the 1993 World Trade Center  bombing and a plot to  bomb New York City landmarks. After working on other national security cases, including investigations in Africa after the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, he helped supervise the Justice Department’s command center near ground-zero in lower Manhattan following the 9/11 attacks. During his 20-year career as a prosecutor, he received numerous honors, including the Justice Department’s highest awards. He taught trial advocacy at New York Law School, and constitutional issues in criminal law at Fordham Law School. Andy speaks and writes widely on law and national security, radical Islam, politics, and culture. He has testified before Congress as an expert on issues of constitutional law, counterterrorism, and law-enforcement. In addition to his regular columns at National Review, Andy writes frequently for other major national publications. His most recent New York Times bestselling book is Ball of Collusion(Encounter Books, 2019), about the Russiagate controversy (an updated version was published in 2020). His other books include Willful Blindness (2008), The Grand Jihad (2010), Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy (2012), and Faithless Execution (2014). He has also written several pamphlets in the Broadside series published by Encounter Books, most recently Islam and Free Speech (2015).

Andrew C. McCarthy

Bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy is a contributing editor at National Review, a senior fellow at National Review Institute, and a Fox News contributor. He is a former Chief Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York and led the terrorism prosecution against the “Blind Sheikh” (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven other jihadists for conducting a war of urban terrorism against the United States that included 

the 1993 World Trade Center  bombing and a plot to  bomb New York City landmarks. After working on other national security cases, including investigations in Africa after the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, he helped supervise the Justice Department’s command center near ground-zero in lower Manhattan following the 9/11 attacks. During his 20-year career as a prosecutor, he received numerous honors, including the Justice Department’s highest awards. He taught trial advocacy at New York Law School, and constitutional issues in criminal law at Fordham Law School. Andy speaks and writes widely on law and national security, radical Islam, politics, and culture. He has testified before Congress as an expert on issues of constitutional law, counterterrorism, and law-enforcement. In addition to his regular columns at National Review, Andy writes frequently for other major national publications. His most recent New York Times bestselling book is Ball of Collusion(Encounter Books, 2019), about the Russiagate controversy (an updated version was published in 2020). His other books include Willful Blindness (2008), The Grand Jihad (2010), Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy (2012), and Faithless Execution (2014). He has also written several pamphlets in the Broadside series published by Encounter Books, most recently Islam and Free Speech (2015).

Bobby Burchfield

Bobby R. Burchfield is a co-founder, with Karl Rove, of Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, Inc., and currently serves as RITE’s Chairman. Before retiring from the practice of law in March 2021, after serving as a partner in three international law firms, Bobby was a trial and appellate  lawyer who tried cases before judges and juries and argued appeals throughout the United States. His cases addressed a broad  range of subjects  including antitrust, commercial  disputes, constitutional law,  election law, and class action issues. Bobby argued two important First Amendment cases

in the Supreme Court of the United States (McConnell v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC), as well as two dozen appeals in the lower courts. Over a 40-year career, Bobby never lost a jury trial. Among other recognitions, he was listed for many years in Best Lawyers in America, and Chambers Partners rated Bobby highly for Commercial Litigation and for Election Law. Bobby is an Adjunct Professor at George Washington Law School, teaching a seminar entitled “Fundamentals of Free Speech as Applied to Contemporary Issues.” He also serves on the Board of Trustees at Wake Forest University, is Vice President for Finance for the Executive Board of the National Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts (NCAC), is Chair of two Super PACs, and serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board of the George Washington Law School. A graduate of Wake Forest University (BA 1976 with distinction in Economics and Political Theory) and the George Washington Law School (1979 with high honors), where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review, Bobby clerked for the Hon. Ruggero J. Aldisert of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He served as General Counsel of President George H.W. Bush’s Re-Election Campaign in 1992, by appointment of President George W. Bush on the Antitrust Advisory Commission (2005-07), and at the request of President Donald J. Trump as Ethics Advisor to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust (2017-2021).

Bobby Burchfield

Bobby R. Burchfield is a co-founder, with Karl Rove, of Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, Inc., and currently serves as RITE’s Chairman. Before retiring from the practice of law in March 2021, after serving as a partner in three international law firms, Bobby was a trial and appellate  lawyer who tried cases before judges and juries and argued appeals throughout the United States. His cases addressed a broad  range of subjects  including antitrust, commercial  disputes, constitutional law,  election law, and class action issues. Bobby argued two important First Amendment cases

in the Supreme Court of the United States (McConnell v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC), as well as two dozen appeals in the lower courts. Over a 40-year career, Bobby never lost a jury trial. Among other recognitions, he was listed for many years in Best Lawyers in America, and Chambers Partners rated Bobby highly for Commercial Litigation and for Election Law. Bobby is an Adjunct Professor at George Washington Law School, teaching a seminar entitled “Fundamentals of Free Speech as Applied to Contemporary Issues.” He also serves on the Board of Trustees at Wake Forest University, is Vice President for Finance for the Executive Board of the National Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts (NCAC), is Chair of two Super PACs, and serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board of the George Washington Law School. A graduate of Wake Forest University (BA 1976 with distinction in Economics and Political Theory) and the George Washington Law School (1979 with high honors), where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review, Bobby clerked for the Hon. Ruggero J. Aldisert of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He served as General Counsel of President George H.W. Bush’s Re-Election Campaign in 1992, by appointment of President George W. Bush on the Antitrust Advisory Commission (2005-07), and at the request of President Donald J. Trump as Ethics Advisor to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust (2017-2021).