The commonwealth of Pennsylvania is calling this a “bad-faith” coordinated challenge. 

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“Throughout the day on Friday, several bad-faith mass challenges were filed in a coordinated effort in counties across the Commonwealth to question the qualifications of thousands of registered Pennsylvania voters who applied to vote by mail ballot,” said Amy Gulli, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State. 

“These challenges are based on theories that courts have repeatedly rejected,” Gulli continued.

The bulk of the new challenges are claiming that because the voter lives outside of the U.S. and is not technically eligible to register as a Pennsylvania voter, they should not be eligible to vote, according to LancasterOnline. The 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, however, established that U.S. citizens and military personnel living overseas could continue to vote by absentee ballot in the state that they last lived in. They are known as “federal only” voters because these voters can participate only in federal races, such as the one for president, but not local races.

These challenges range from a dozen in Clinton County to more than 1,300 ballots in Bucks County. In Chester County, at least one county that has already held its hearing, the challenges were dismissed.

It’s unclear exactly who or what groups are behind all of the challenges, but some confirmed challengers point to right-wing activists being behind them. Challenge petitions reviewed by Votebeat and Spotlight PA, as well as information provided by county officials, show the challenges came from those associated with the Election Research Institute and PA Fair Elections. 

These two groups are led by Heather Honey, a Pennsylvania researcher who has provided faulty information and contributed to election denialism since the 2020 election. PA Fair Elections has denied filing any change-of-address challenges or having any filed on its behalf, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Nevertheless, Diane Houser, who filed challenges in Chester County, confirmed at a hearing Friday that she was working with PA Fair Elections and the challenges were part of a “statewide effort.” Challenges in Delaware County were filed by Patricia Bleasdale, who has also attended PA Fair Elections meetings. Twenty-eight challenges were filed on Friday in Allegheny County by Charles Faltenovich, who is also associated with PA Fair Elections, according to a county spokesperson.

Marian Schneider, senior voting rights policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said federal law protects the rights of these citizens to participate in federal elections, even if they are not registered in Pennsylvania.

She said voters cannot register to vote, as they are not Pennsylvania residents, but UOCAVA gives overseas citizens the right to vote in the last state they lived in.

“It’s people who don’t understand the law or didn’t take time to research the law that are filing these challenges, just because they are not in the voter registration database,” Schneider told Votebeat. “These are misguided attempts to silence the voice of voters, and these challenges represent a misunderstanding of what their status is and what the law is.”

The ACLU sent a letter to all 67 Pennsylvania counties on Sunday notifying them that if they received these challenges, they were “legally deficient” and cautioned the counties against preventing overseas voters from casting ballots based on these challenges.

Judges dismissed similar challenges from the Republican National Committee to overseas voters in North Carolina and Michigan.