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Justin Kweder, a Pennsylvania attorney and volunteer certified GOP canvass observer, provided testimony Wednesday at a Pennsylvania legislature committee hearing on the 2020 election.

Kweder said he was present as an observer at the Philadelphia Convention Center and at the count on election day. He returned as a volunteer observer to watch the process for the next 10 days, estimating he spent 85 hours over those 10 days watching.

“Part of the reason that I kept going back was so that I could authoritatively speak about what I saw,” he said. “What I saw was problematic, to say the least.”

Kweder added he witnessed too many issues and irregularities to cover in a brief opening statement, so he focused on two issues that he personally observed.

The first was the Philadelphia Board of Election processing hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots with zero civilian oversight or observation. He said mail-in ballots were handled, processed, opened and counted in Hall F of the convention center, which is about 120,000 square feet. A fence was erected by the board of elections and all observers were placed behind the fence while more than 100 board workers opened and processed mail-in ballots on the other side of the fence.

Masked workers were arranged throughout the room at a distance of about 10 feet to more than 200 feet away from observers.

Kweder estimated 96 percent of the board workers were processing mail-in ballots 15-200 feet from the observers.

“Due to the distance of the workers from the erected fences, it was impossible for me or any observer to see what the workers were doing without any type of specificity,” Kweder said.

Observers were unable to challenge any decision made or impact determinations being made about the processing of ballots.

Kweder also discussed the pink highlighted duplicated ballots, which as he pointed out, has received zero attention from mainstream media.

According to Kweder, observers were informed the board would be duplicating damaged mail-in ballots that could not be read by the scanner. They were told this would be more than 5,000 ballots, but the actual number was unknown and could be much higher.

The process for duplicating the ballots was for two workers to work as a pair. The plan was to run the pink highlighted ballots through the scanners and count them as votes. Board workers did the pink highlighter duplication work over the course of a couple of days until thousands were duplicated. On Thursday, Nov. 12, the observers were informed the pink highlighters could not be read by the scanner and they all had to be done again.

The solution was to give workers who were working alone individually stacks of hundreds of blank mail-in ballots. Workers individually filled in the ovals without observation. Workers did double recreation work for hours before the observers realized what was going on.

While some on the Philadelphia commission claim it was the most secure and transparent election in Philadelphia history, those on the ground would argue otherwise.

“Now, I wasn’t around for every election in Philadelphia history, but I can tell you as an eye witness, for 10 days, for more than 80 hours, what I saw was not a secure and transparent election,” Kweder said. “There are major concerns about the legitimacy of hundreds of thousands of ballots that were counted in Philadelphia.”

Kweder closed by saying any restoration of faith on the part of Pennsylvanians in the electoral system can only be accomplished after an investigation into this election and only after the law is properly applied to this election.

“The idea that we can just move on by making sure that the law is properly applied in the next election is, in my opinion, unacceptable,” he said. “Action must be taken now to maintain our free and fair elections and to preserve and protect our election integrity.”

Author: Jacob Hall

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