Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

A Pennsylvania postal worker withdrew a claim that ballots were backdated, officials say.

Provisional ballots were collected on Election Day in Erie, Pa.Credit...Greg Wohlford/Erie Times-News, via Associated Press

The Postal Service’s inspector general has informed Congress that a worker who had made allegations of ballot corruption at a facility in Erie, Pa., had disavowed his claims, which Republicans had called evidence of widespread fraud in Pennsylvania’s voting.

Richard Hopkins, a postal employee in Erie, “completely” recanted allegations that a supervisor was “tampering with mail-in ballots” after investigators questioned him, the inspector general’s office said on Tuesday, according to the Democratic leadership of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

Not long after the Democrats’ announcement, Project Veritas — a conservative group that researchers say has run a disinformation campaign to delegitimize the voting process — released a video in which Mr. Hopkins said that he had not actually recanted his statements.

Mr. Hopkins had claimed in a sworn affidavit given to President Trump’s campaign that he overheard what he believed to be a discussion about backdating postmarks on ballots that arrived at the postal facility after Election Day.

Ballots must have been postmarked by Election Day, Nov. 3, to count. The implication of Mr. Hopkins’s claim was that postal workers had backdated ballots that should have been disqualified.

In Pennsylvania, mail-in ballots received after Election Day have been separated from those that arrived by Nov. 3 and have not been counted yet. President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has won Pennsylvania without them.

Only about 130 mail-in ballots arrived after Election Day, out of about 135,000 ballots cast in Erie County, the chairman of the county’s board of elections said in a statement.

Luke Broadwater covers Congress. He was the lead reporter on a series of investigative articles at the Baltimore Sun that won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award in 2020. More about Luke Broadwater

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT