A group of Pennsylvania nuns is fighting back after a conservative voter organizer publicly accused them on social media of falsifying their voter records to help fraudulently swing the presidential election in the Democrats’ favor.
The Benedictine Sisters of Erie said Wednesday that they are considering legal counsel after dozens of nuns were accused of falsely identifying the monastery as their legal residence in their voter registrations when it is, in fact, where they live.
“To be unjustly accused of voter fraud is just really disgusting, ugly,” Sister Stephanie Schmidt, the prioress, told The Washington Post of the allegations made on X by Cliff Maloney, who founded the conservative group PA Chase.
Maloney’s posts have resulted in the monastery receiving complaints from across the country, Schmidt said.
The nightmare follows Maloney alleging Tuesday that one of his door knockers had visited the nuns’ monastery to check on the status of an unreturned mail-in ballot that was registered to a Republican. While there, someone on the property told him that no one lives there, despite 53 voters — the vast majority listed as “liberal” — being registered as residing at the address.
In a following post, one that’s received more than 2.7 million views, Maloney surmised that voter fraud was being committed.
“Our attorney’s are reviewing this right now. We will not let the Dems count on illegal votes,” he wrote while publicly sharing the names of the women listed as residing at the address. “Once we have proof, we will be content,” he added.
Maloney did not say who his worker spoke with and whether he had tried to reach out directly to the monastery or local authorities before making his claim publicly. When contacted by JS, he forwarded a link to a past comment he had made and did not answer any questions.
Maloney told The Washington Post that his team is “working to confirm” that the women live at the monastery’s address and that if they don’t live there, “we’ll look at the next step to take to make sure that only legal votes are cast.”
A spokesperson with Pennsylvania’s Department of State, which handles voter fraud allegations within the state, told JS on Thursday that the department is looking into whether a report has been filed in relation to Maloney’s claims.
“We want to be on public record as having called out this fraud so that if the outcome of next month’s election is contested in Pennsylvania our integrity will not be called into question.”
– The Benedictine Sisters of Erie
Sister Linda Romey, coordinator of communications and development with the monastery, told JS that there is no evidence that someone working with Maloney actually spoke to someone at the monastery, however.
“We do not know him nor do any of our sisters remember ever talking with anyone asking those kinds of questions,” she said in an email. “There is only one public entrance to the monastery, it’s a significant front entrance, and there is a reception desk inside the door where a sister welcomes guests all day long.”
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In a public statement, Schmidt called on Maloney to take accountability for “his blatantly false post that accuses our sisters of fraud.” She also urged others to seek more information before “unquestioningly” accepting anything they read on social media as factual.
“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,” she said.
The monastery added that it is pursuing legal counsel regarding what it believes amounts to public defamation.
“We are sharing our experience in an effort to increase scrutiny and to encourage others to ask questions and seek information,” the monastery said. “We want to be on public record as having called out this fraud so that if the outcome of next month’s election is contested in Pennsylvania our integrity will not be called into question.”
Romey also told JS that the nuns have calls planned for Thursday with Pennsylvania’s Department of State and Secretary of State Al Schmidt, whom she said Sister Schmidt has no relation to, to further discuss the matter. She added that no one at the monastery has had direct contact with Maloney, though she said that he — or any other visitor — would be welcome to stop by and share a meal and prayer with them.
