When Traci Siegel opened her email on Sunday, she was shocked to learn that her vote in the presidential election might not count.

Siegel, who lives in Israel, voted absentee in his home state of Pennsylvania, as he had done many times before, in accordance with federal law that requires states to allow Americans living abroad to vote for federal office. through your last county of residence. But this year, someone he doesn’t know paid $10 to appeal his vote.

“The Dauphin County Board of Elections received a challenge to your absentee ballot,” wrote the country’s Chief Election Officer, Christopher T. Spackman. “The challenge contends that a provision of the Pennsylvania Election Code takes precedence over the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act.”

Siegel was informed that she could appear in person at a hearing in the state capital of Harrisburg – although she is in Israel – on Friday, three days after the election.

“When I first received the challenge, I felt attacked and helpless,” Siegel said. Jewish Insider. “My whole life I assumed that voting was a basic right, and that someone could pay just $10 to take it away seemed crazy to me.”

American Democrats in Israel referred JI to a statement from VoteFromAbroad.org, an informational website run by the Democratic Party, saying that the organization’s voter protection unit is working with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and citing that “3,600 overseas AP ballots (that) are being challenged in nine countries by individuals (on behalf of (Republican presidential candidate Donald) Trump).”

Questioned ballots don’t just affect Democrats. Republicans Overseas Israel told JI that some Pennsylvania voters who requested their help in submitting their ballots also had their votes questioned.

Press reports In recent days they have said the challenges come from Trump supporters alleging voter fraud, and last week, a Harrisburg court dismissed a lawsuit from six Republican members of Congress that could have undermined the overseas voting process. Mark Zell, vice president of Israel Republicans Overseas, said he was concerned these efforts would affect Israeli voters in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is widely considered a must-win state in the presidential race, and the disqualification of even a small number of votes could affect the state’s results. In 2020, the winner of the presidential race in Pennsylvania was not known until four days after the election. Litigating ballot challenges in Pennsylvania may also delay the state’s vote count this year.

“What’s going to happen with these is that, because they’ve been challenged, they will now be set aside and initially not included in the count,” Ari Savitzky, senior staff attorney at the ACLU, said Tuesday. After local election boards decide later this week whether to reject the challenge, people who challenged the ballots will have two more days to appeal the decision.

“Because the federal law is very clear here, I have every reason to hope that these people’s ballots will eventually be counted, but unfortunately, there will be delays in that due to the abuse of this challenge process,” Savitzky added.

The challenge to Siegel’s vote was filed by Aimee Lighty, a licensed therapist in Pennsylvania with a very small, apolitical social media presence, according to the email Siegel received from the Dauphin County Board of Elections. Lighty did not respond to JI’s messages about the challenge, but her name has been linked to at least other contested ballot.

Lighty’s challenge to Siegel’s ballot appears to be consistent with what the ACLU described as “mass-produced challenges” that claim “voters should not be allowed to vote because they are outside the United States and are not registered to vote.” vote in Pennsylvania,” according to a letter from the ACLU to Pennsylvania County Attorneys.

The ACLU noted that “nearly 50 years ago, Congress enshrined the continuing right of U.S. citizens abroad to vote in the district in which they last lived, but only for federal elections… While it is possible that These voters are not technically ‘registered’ to vote in Pennsylvania for the purposes of state elections, federal law unquestionably protects their right to vote for federal office.”

“The appropriate course of action for any county receiving mass challenges to these federally qualified ‘alien voters’ is to summarily reject the challenges as procedurally and substantially deficient,” the ACLU wrote.

The Pennsylvania Department of State said The New York Times that the challenges were made in “bad faith” and “are based on theories that the courts have repeatedly rejected” in an attempt to “undermine confidence in the November 5 elections.”

Many of the challenges were brought by Pennsylvania state Sen. Jarett Coleman, a lawyer named Karen DiSalvo who represented Republican members of Congress in their lawsuit, and Charles Faltenovich of a group called PA Fair Elections, a CNN report found.

About 500,000 American citizens live in Israel, according to the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Trump is the most popular presidential candidate in Israel by a wide margin, according to a recent surveyand American voting patterns in Israel are expected to reflect that view. Representatives of both parties in Israel have told JI that Republican candidates received the majority of American votes in Israel in recent decades.

In September, Trump aware on his Truth Social website that Democrats are “preparing to DECEIT.” The Republican candidate claimed, without evidence, that his opponents planned to send ballots abroad “without any citizenship checks or identity verification of any kind.” (Foreign interference?)”

Absentee Ballot Verification Methods vary by statebut most require a Social Security number or a valid state driver’s license, as well as a valid signature checked against voter registration.

Days after Trump’s post suggesting that Democrats abroad attempted to commit voter fraud, the Trump campaign released a video in which the candidate appealed to American citizens living in Israel to vote for him because “no one in history has supported Israel and the Jewish people like I have.” Additionally, Trump released a video appealing to foreign voters around the world, promising to end double taxation on U.S. citizens living abroad.

Get-out-the-vote efforts in Israel continued into Tuesday, with the Family Research Council and prominent evangelical pastor Tony Perkins campaigning for Trump with settler leader and Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan in Hebrew and Englishemphasizing opposition to a two-state solution that cedes the West Bank, “the biblical heartland where most of the Bible stories occurred.”

Jewish Insider Senior National Correspondent Gabby Deutch contributed reporting.