For a Republican canvasser going door-to-door to get out the vote in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, the address on East Lake Road in Erie must have seemed like Heaven-sent evidence of the sort of widespread voter fraud many in his party have been complaining about since Donald Trump lost the election to Joe Biden in 2020.
There were 53 voters registered at the address, the site of a Catholic church, but not a single one actually living there, Cliff Maloney, a conservative operative and founder of The Pennsylvania Chase, claimed on X in a post that quickly went viral.
But there were voters at that address — dozens of them actually. Fifty-five hard-to-miss nuns of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie.
A so-called ballot chaser, who goes door-to-door encouraging voters to return their mail-in ballots, had somehow missed the packed parking lot and the bustling reception area where nuns shuffled between their simple living quarters and the impressive stained-glass windows in the chapel.
Maloney heads a group that encourages Republicans to vote by mail and is part of a larger, often coordinated network of conservatives who cast doubts on the security of the election, suggesting widespread fraud in mail ballots, sharing uncorroborated stories of machines changing votes and urging voters to be alert and document suspected wrongdoing.
Evidence for their concerns, however, remains as thin as it was in the 2020 election and local officials are actively trying to combat the flurry of false and misleading claims like Maloney’s that spread like wildfire on social media.
The monastery has been in Erie since the 1850s and moved into their current building in 1969, in part financed by sisters who formed a real-life musical “Sister Act” group to raise funds. Most of the residents have lived there for decades and are deeply engaged with the community.
“We’ve been in Erie since 1856 doing good work. These sisters don’t deserve to be put down by some misinformation that we’re a sham, that we’re a fraud,” said the prioress, Sister Stephanie Schmidt.
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