Over 45,000 Concerned Citizens Weren’t Enough to Convince Al Schmidt to Allow a Third-Party Audit
On Thursday, November 6, 2025, the Election Truth Alliance filed its first lawsuit in Pennsylvania seeking to compel a hand-count audit of the 2024 General Election.
The complaint asserts that late-stage software changes, documented testing failures, ballot-handling irregularities, and statistically anomalous voting patterns in Cambria, Erie, and Allegheny Counties collectively deprived voters of their constitutional right to cast a ballot and have it counted accurately.
The suit follows months of efforts to persuade Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt to authorize an independent third-party hand-count audit, backed by a petition signed by more than 45,000 Pennsylvania voters.
Cambria County Chaos
The latest in a growing list of election-integrity concerns in Pennsylvania comes from Cambria County, where local reporting suggested the county had “trended blue” on Election Day, when in fact the vote totals show the opposite. As with other counties under review, ETA’s investigation uncovered multiple irregularities that raise serious questions about the accuracy of Cambria’s reported results.
Discrepancies in Mail-In Ballot Reporting:
Cambria County had a total 88,508 registered voters
The state’s 7:00 pm Daily Mail Ballot Report showed 15,258 mail-in ballots received.
The county’s official results list only 15,022. That leaves 236 ballots unaccounted for—ballots that were not rejected or cancelled. They just disappeared.
The 8:00 pm Act 88 report showed 15,121 mail-in ballots received, a difference of 99 votes from the official total.
So the 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm numbers decreased? “Weird.”
But wait—it gets worse.
The 7:00 p.m. report shows 16,827 mail-in ballots were requested. The 8:00 p.m. Act 88 report shows 15,121 were returned. A difference of 1,706 ballots.
Democrats returned 7,596 ballots and Republicans returned 6,475, yet the official results credit Donald Trump with 7,328 mail-in votes—853 more than the number of Republican ballots returned. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and the third-party candidates show a combined deficit of 853 votes—a perfectly symmetrical loss. A difference of 1,706 ballots.
Yes, you read that correctly: Donald Trump received 853 more mail-in votes than the number of Republican ballots returned, while Kamala Harris and all other candidates received precisely 853 less equaling 1,706 ballots, a perfect mathematical swing.
But wait—there’s more.
When added to provisional and Election Day ballots, the totals equal exactly 88,508—the precise number of registered voters in the county, implying a 100% participation rate.
This isn’t just a statistical red flag, it’s a five alarm fire.
State Rep Frank Burns Would Like a Word
On Election Night, State Rep Frank Burns reported watching his own vote totals decrease in real time—an anomaly state officials later dismissed as a “glitch.”
Although Burns ultimately won his race, it became clear that Cambria County experienced a major breakdown in its ballot-scanning process. Burns filed multiple Right-to-Know requests seeking clarity on how many ballots failed to scan and how many replacement ballots were issued.
He also criticized the county commissioners’ plan to lead an investigation into their own conduct, noting that they serve on the Election Board and oversee the staff involved. As Burns put it, relying on such an internal review “makes no sense whatsoever. We all know how that type of ‘internal investigation’ will end.”
“I won my election—but that’s not what matters here. Everyone deserves to know exactly what happened, so there can be accountability for such a huge systemic failure. How can machines that the commission chairman says were tested prior to the election and apparently working properly suddenly fail to scan ballots on Election Day—not just in one or two precincts, but across the entirety of Cambria County?”
The Cambria County commissioners initially claimed they did not have to comply with any portion of Rep. Burns’s Right-to-Know Law request that was framed as a question. Burns appealed, and in June 2025 he won—forcing the county to produce the required records. Yet despite that ruling, the matter remains unresolved: How and why did ballot scanners across Cambria County suddenly fail on Election Day?
Duplication of 65,000 Election Day Ballots
Cambria County’s Election Day ballot handling raised even more concerns. Because of a so-called printing error—reminiscent of Florida in 2000—officials say roughly 65,000 ballots had to be “duplicated” by poll workers onto newly printed ballots instead of being hand-counted.
In practice, this meant poll workers filled out new ballots on voters’ behalf, which were then scanned into the system. Although this process is technically court-approved, it raises an obvious question: why not hand-count the originals? Instead, the duplication process introduced multiple opportunities for error and significantly weakened the chain of custody.
County officials claimed Deputy Sheriffs delivered the replacement ballots directly to each precinct. However, ETA-obtained livestream footage from November 5 shows poll workers and volunteers packaging ballots in unsealed boxes and envelopes, indicating far looser handling than the county publicly reported.
The county later confirmed that every Election Day ballot was duplicated—even though same-day reporting shows the new ballots were delivered by 1 p.m., and officials acknowledged there were no further scanner issues after that time. This raises an unresolved question: Why were ballots that scanned properly still duplicated and re-scanned?
When ETA filed a Right-to-Know request for records documenting ballot issuance, spoilage, unused ballots, and destroyed ballots—as required by Pennsylvania law—the county could not produce any of the records.
Brass tacks in Cambria County:
Missing ballots
Conflicting official vote total reports
Perfectly symmetrical mathematical swings
65,000 ballots duplicated
Gaps in legally required chain-of-custody records
100% registered voter turnout per their math
The unexplained discrepancies in Cambria County’s ballot totals, along with the anomalous patterns and irregularities identified in other Pennsylvania counties, raise significant questions that cannot be resolved without transparent records and an independent audit.
Additionally, the county’s heavy reliance on ballot duplication—paired with its inability to produce legally required documentation—further undermines confidence in the accuracy of the reported results. We will continue to report on this lawsuit as it progresses.
The Fix Is Already In
In other news, Democrats cleaned house on November 4 and Elon is out here on Beyonce’s internet talking about rabbits and a hat.
Bonus: SpaceX is close to securing a $2 billion contract to build Trump’s Golden Dome.
It’s probably fine. Nothing to see here, right? Well—aside from the statistically absurd 2024 election data in the swing states. They told us for a year that they didn’t need the votes.
Democratic Party legislators, what are we even doing right now? Can we talk? Asking for a few million friends.