A Villanova University law professor told Congress on Monday, Sept. 14, that Pennsylvania's voting systems are secure ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
"Elections in the U.S. and in Pennsylvania are secure," Marian Schneider said at a hearing held at Widener University in Chester.
Schneider, an adjunct professor of law at the Radnor Township university, is a former Pennsylvania election official who served as senior policy counsel for voting rights at the ACLU of Pennsylvania from 2021 to 2025. She told the panel that the state's computer voting systems produce paper ballots and that counties are required to perform post-election audits to verify results.
U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Delaware County hosted the event alongside Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee. Pennsylvania Reps. Madeleine Dean and Chrissy Houlahan also participated, according to WHYY.
The session was an unofficial "shadow hearing" organized by committee Democrats outside the formal hearing process. No votes were taken. Four experts testified on election security, voting rights and government ethics.
The hearing came as a second federal judge blocked the Trump administration's mail-ballot restrictions. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee in Washington, D.C., ruled that Congress empowered the Postal Service to move mail, not to force states to enroll voters in a federal portal or refuse ballots that fail its checks, Axios reported. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston, an Obama appointee, had issued a similar order earlier.
Trump's March 2026 executive order directed the federal government to create a list of eligible voters and the Postal Service to deliver ballots only to those on that list. More than 20 states, including Pennsylvania, sued to stop the requirements. The Supreme Court in August 2026 lifted one of two injunctions but did not rule on the order's legality.
Omar Noureldin, senior vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, noted at the hearing that judges appointed by presidents of both parties had found the executive order unlawful.
A White House spokeswoman told WHYY the mail-ballot safeguards were proposed months ago, giving election officials ample time to prepare, and that the administration looks forward to the Supreme Court's ruling.
The panel also addressed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE Act, which would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. The bill is stalled in Congress. Scanlon called it a massive disfranchisement effort that would block hundreds of thousands of citizens from voting.
Amy Widestrom, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, testified that Pennsylvania's REAL ID would not satisfy the SAVE Act because it does not identify holders as citizens.
Lawmakers also raised concerns about Trump administration comments on deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling locations. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters earlier in September that agents could deploy to polling sites for "threats" not necessarily related to the election. Rep. Morelle responded that federal law prohibits armed individuals at polling places.
Scanlon said in a statement from her office that the White House is suppressing voter participation by sowing propaganda and injecting chaos into elections.
Pennsylvania's midterm elections are Nov. 3. The Supreme Court has not set a date for its ruling on the mail-ballot executive order.
