A group of nuns in the key swing state of Pennsylvania have denied allegations that the address of its monastery in Erie was being used for voter fraud.
The claim originated with Cliff Maloney, the founder of the Pennsylvania Chase, a group dedicated to increasing GOP mail-in ballot success. Maloney claimed his group had visited the monastery and found no one was living there despite 53 voters being registered at the address.
“BREAKING: a member of the PA CHASE discovered an address in Erie, PA today where 53 voters are registered. Turns out it’s the Benedictine Sisters of Erie and NO ONE lives there,” Maloney wrote in a post on X to his 58,000 followers, explaining that his group had knocked on the door because a Republican mail-in ballot sent to the address had gone unreturned.
“Our attorney’s [sic] are reviewing this right now. We will not let the Dems count on illegal votes,” he added in the post that has been viewed more than 2.7 million times.
The Benedictine Sisters swiftly disputed Maloney’s claims in a statement of their own.
“We want to call Cliff Maloney to account for his blatantly false post that accuses our sisters of fraud. We do live at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery and a simple web search would alert him to our active presence in a number of ministries in Erie,” Sister Stephanie Schmidt said in a statement.
She urged social-media users to “be vigilant” in determining the accuracy of posts like Maloney’s.
“A free republic depends on free and fair elections. It depends equally on a discerning and conscientious citizenry who do not unquestioningly accept the word of anyone who has a social media platform,” she added in the statement.
Maloney, for his part, told the Washington Post that he had seen Schmidt’s statement and that his team was “working to confirm” that the sisters live on-site at the monastery.
“Glad they put the statement out,” he said. “I respect that, but we’re going to dive a little deeper, confirm that that’s correct.”
“If we confirm that, great, I encourage them to vote,” Maloney added. “If we don’t confirm that, we’ll look at the next step to take to make sure that only legal votes are cast.”
The Benedictine Sisters told the outlet they are planning to take legal action against Maloney.
Schmidt said the order is nonpartisan, and each sister “votes her conscience.” The order is committed to “working for peace and justice, especially for the rights of women and children, and the climate crisis,” she said.
A RealClearPolitics polling average shows former president Donald Trump narrowly leading Vice President Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania by just 0.6 percentage points. Harris leads Trump by 0.2 percentage points nationally.