Philadelphia, PA – The Committee of Seventy released the following statement in response to President Trump’s July 16 address, in which he used the declassification of thousands of documents to renew claims about the 2020 election that have already been rejected in courtrooms across the country:
“The President’s speech repackaged old, debunked claims as new revelations. Declassifying one document or a thousand documents does not make its underlying allegations true six years after the 2020 election. These claims have been debunked in many, many court cases. This isn’t about 2020, it’s about undermining confidence in the 2026 election.
Pennsylvania’s own Republican Auditor General recently conducted an audit of voter registration roles and, of the 200,000 surveyed, found just one noncitizen who completed an application to register when they shouldn’t have. Upon investigation, it was determined that human error allowed the person to complete the form and the individual never cast a ballot.
There is an important distinction here that gets lost in moments like this: influence is not interference. Foreign governments and bad actors try to shape public opinion around elections all the time — that is a real and serious challenge, and it’s one our security agencies rightly monitor. But seeking to influence how people think is fundamentally different from actually tampering with how votes are cast or counted. Conflating the two is not a security finding. It’s a tactic designed to sow doubt and mistrust in our elections and build political pressure for legislation like the SAVE Act, which would make it harder for eligible citizens – including Pennsylvania’s rural voters and married women who’ve changed their names – to vote.
Instead of investing in election security and transparency on the federal level, President Trump has gutted many of the key tools the federal government has to support elections. If the President is so concerned with security, he should not have fired the leaders of the Election Assistance Commission or reduced the workforce of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by nearly a third.
Pennsylvanians don’t have to take anyone’s word for how our elections work. The checks and balances, audits, bipartisan oversight and paper trails built into our system are not theoretical — they’re visible. You can see them for yourself here, at the Committee of Seventy’s Election Academy, or by serving as a poll worker on Election Day. Firsthand experience is the best antidote to manufactured doubt.
We urge Pennsylvanians to seek out that experience, and we urge Congress to reject legislation that uses fear rather than facts as its foundation.”
About the Committee of Seventy
The Committee of Seventy is a nonpartisan civic leadership organization that advances representative, ethical, and effective government in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania through citizen engagement and public policy advocacy. Founded in 1904, C70 has spent more than 120 years protecting election integrity and empowering citizens to participate meaningfully in democracy.
