Mike Lindell-inspired 'patriot' groups work to get voting machines banned across Pennsylvania

Mike Lindell's ongoing war against Dominion Voting Systems now extends to advocating for the elimination of the electronic voting machines entirely. Oddly, it has long been a question by liberals who have taken issue with a system that often doesn't provide a paper record of a vote tabulation.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette revealed that a conservative group motivated by the MyPillow CEO has formed in Pennsylvania to try and get electronic voting machines completely removed from Pennsylvania. The group has begun collecting signatures to get a referendum on the November ballot, which would be voted for on electronic voting machines.

Among Donald Trump's top supporters "Lindell and former Army intelligence officer Seth Keshel, who have made careers traveling the country to spread false claims that the 2020 election was stolen," said the report. The "patriot" groups are now trying to change the rules in at least 16 counties in Pennsylvania.

“That’s what we have to do to save our country,” Lindell said in a taped message for Trump's Sept. 3 rally.

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Those aligned with the former president have spent the years following the 2020 election attacking pieces of the Pennsylvania election after he failed to win the state. They've lashed out about the ease of voting, mail-in voting, ballot drop boxes and now electronic voting machines. That paranoia is now making its way into county government centers, the report explained, with activists demanding the election go back to 20th century methods of voting with pencil and paper.

“Stick the machines in the closet and hand-count the paper ballots,” complained one Beaver County resident named Toni Shuppe, who is leading Audit the Vote PA. “Election integrity can only be achieved when the process is transparent. Not having access to what is going on inside the machines decreases transparency and therefore negatively affects the integrity of the electoral process.”

One of the ongoing problems with Pennsylvania are laws that mandate that despite ballots coming into county offices prior to the election, they can't be counted until after the polls close. It causes conspiracy theories because votes cast by electronic machines on the day of the election are counted quickly, whereas paper votes counted by scantron take longer.

"Gov. Tom Wolf in 2018 declared that all of Pennsylvania’s election systems must be decertified and replaced with ones that produce a paper record that could be checked and verified by the voter," the report explained. It was at the recommendation of former President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security. All of the machines had to be replaced by the 2020 election.

The state election code was updated last in 2019 to allow for no-excuse mail-in voting, and the rest of the election laws would remain the same.