An important step towards establishing election integrity has been taken in the state of Pennsylvania, where the state has agreed to remove deceased citizens from their voter rolls. After November’s tumultuous election, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) filed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania state officials after discovering they had not removed 21,000 dead voters from their voter rolls.

Upon further investigation, PILF found that individuals who have been dead for up to 20 years were still registered as active voters, allowing others to cast additional votes illegally under the names of the deceased. In pursuing a fair and uncorrupted election system, PILF was key in the fight to eliminate voter fraud in PA and has taken important steps towards establishing a higher standard of election integrity.

In a statement to the Washington Times, Pennsylvania’s Department of State insisted that the agreement “includes no finding of inadequacy on the part of Pennsylvania and its counties.” However, despite denying that there were actually 21,000 dead voters on the voter roll, a settlement was still reached to uphold fair and accurate elections.

In a news release on PILF’s website, they posted a summary of the terms that were agreed to as a result of the lawsuit:

• • Before the 2021 statewide general election, the death data set received from the Electronic Registration Information Center will be compared to the full voter registration database to identify individuals who are ineligible to vote due to their death.
  • The Pennsylvania Department of State will give each county commission the names of the individuals identified as deceased and inform the commissions that they should promptly cancel the registrations.
  • The Department of State will provide PILF with copies of the full voter export at three-month intervals on three separate occasions—May 30, 2021, August 31, 2021 and November 30, 2021.

The agreed-upon terms require the state to remove all dead voters from their active voter roll, as well as pay $7,500 to the Public Interest Legal Foundation to cover part of the attorney fees and other costs.