Pennsylvania voters are one step closer to knowing the truth about the state’s 2020 General Presidential Election after Verity Vote founder Heather Honey wins her appeal under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know law.
Pennsylvania resident Heather Honey has a background in corporate investigations, open-source research, and supply chain auditing. she was the perfect professional to personally discover election irregularities in her state and track them down through records requests, “outside the box” applications of technologies, and forensic analysis.
In 2020, Honey stood in line with her son, a newly registered voter at the time, to cast their ballots in the 2020 Presidential general election. An elderly couple stood in line before Heather Honey and her son as they stepped up to vote. The man’s name was checked off on the numbered voter list and his ballot prepared, but his wife was told she could not vote as she had already voted via mail. The couple both insisted that the woman had not voted by mail, but she was only allowed to cast a provisional ballot without any assurance that her vote would be counted.
According to the Thomas More Law Society, the disturbing incident piqued Honey’s curiosity. As an open-source investigator, she decided to apply those skills to determine how frequently that type of situation occurred.
“The more that Ms. Honey learned,” Breth added, “The more she came to believe that the Pennsylvania Department of State was giving guidance to election officials that was based on political reasons rather than the law. Honey observed that any activities that were purported to determine accuracy in the voting process were not based on Pennsylvania law, leading one to believe that these officials either don’t know what the law is or they feel like they don’t have to follow it.”
While investigating the 2020 election, Heather created Verity Vote, an organization dedicated to election transparency, matching the numbers of ballots with the number of citizens voting, and many other critical aspects of keeping lawful votes secure and accurately recorded while identifying discrepancies and breaches of election statutes.
The Thomas More Law Society is representing Heather Honey in her fight to obtain a digital copy of the cast vote record file for every precinct tabulator and central tabulator used in the 2020 General Election
On December 16, 2022, a judge ordered the Lycoming County Office of Voter Services to provide investigator Heather Honey with the information she requested.
Thomas More Society Special Counsel Tom Breth described how Honey, an open-source investigator and the founder of Verity Vote, originally requested the cast vote record in October 2021, which the Lycoming County Office of Voter Services denied. A subsequent appeal to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records was denied on January 6, 2022, resulting in Honey’s February 3, 2022, petition for a review of the denial under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know law.
“Heather Honey, a Pennsylvania voter, is fighting for the election integrity that all Pennsylvania voters deserve,” explained Breth. “The cast vote record is simply an electronic record of a voter’s ballot selections, and its primary purpose is to provide a record of voter selections that can be counted in an efficient manner to produce election results. That data can be key to proving the veracity of Ms. Honey’s documented evidence showing that Pennsylvania’s 2020 general election results show that there were 120,000 fewer voters registered to vote in Pennsylvania than there were ballots counted. That’s 120,000 votes that cannot be legally attached to an actual voter.”
The court determined that the Lycoming County cast vote record is not excepted from public access, as it is not “the contents of ballot boxes [or] voting machines” and ordered Lycoming County Voter Services to provide Honey with a printed copy of the cast vote record from the Lycoming County 2020 General Election.
Watch Heather Honey’s interview with election integrity expert Cleta Mitchell:
The court order will take effect on January 15, 2023, unless an appeal is filed.
Read the Opinion and Order, issued December 16, 2022, by Judge Eric R. Linhardt in the Court of Common Pleas of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, regarding the Right-to-Know Law Appeal presented by Thomas More Society attorneys on behalf of Heather Honey in Heather Honey v. Lycoming County Office of Voter Services here.
