Scott Presler, appearing on The Benny Johnson Show on August 9, told viewers that Philadelphia had just dealt a historic blow to Democratic voter registration: "it was the biggest purge Philadelphia has done with over 50,000 Democrats being removed and a net loss for the Democrats of over 31,000 voters in one weekend after we inspected the non-jurors." He also described a Chester County list of "65 pages of nearly 4,000 non-citizens," and said "ping after ping flagged alleged illegal alien matches of people that are on the voter rolls and voting."
Start with what is real, because a real thing did happen, and the claim's numbers are built on it. Pennsylvania ran a routine update of its voter records, and the figures Presler cites track the state's own. The update moved 55,241 registered Democrats and 23,832 registered Republicans from active to inactive status [1]. Subtract one column from the other and you get 31,409, which is almost certainly the origin of the "net loss for the Democrats of over 31,000" figure. The arithmetic is not invented. It is also true that conservative activists, Presler among them, have been cross-referencing county juror questionnaires against the voter rolls, and that Chester County produced a 65-page list of people disqualified from jury service [2].
Everything wrapped around that arithmetic is false. Nobody was removed. An inactive voter is a registered voter, and the Pennsylvania Department of State said so directly through spokesperson Geoff Morrow: "Updating these voter records is not a 'purge' of voters and does not mean that they were on the rolls improperly" [1]. Voters moved to inactive status remain registered and remain eligible to vote in November [1].
That is not a partisan reading of the record. Seth Bluestein, a Republican who serves as a Philadelphia City Commissioner, says the process is standard, federally compliant, and has nothing to do with claims about noncitizen voting [1]. Neil Makhija, a Montgomery County commissioner, was plainer still: "There's nothing particularly special or unusual about this" [1].
The noncitizen half of the claim fares no better. The Department of State says of the juror-list method the activists used: "There is not enough information used [in non-juror lists] to accurately match each individual with the voter file" [2]. Chester County's court administrator says the 65-page list Presler waved reflects disqualifications for many reasons, including medical excuses, out-of-county residency, and age, not solely citizenship [2]. A voter excused from jury duty for a medical condition is not a noncitizen, and a list that mixes those categories cannot support the label "nearly 4,000 non-citizens." Statewide, Pennsylvania has confirmed exactly one case of a noncitizen who voted, in Lancaster County [2]. One confirmed case, set against a broadcast describing "ping after ping" of alleged matches.
The mechanics here are worth naming, because they will recur between now and November. A routine administrative file produces a large, real number. The number gets repeated more or less accurately, then relabeled one word at a time: inactive becomes removed, list maintenance becomes purge, disqualified jurors become non-citizens, and a state process that ran on its ordinary federal schedule becomes something activists did "in one weekend." Each substitution is small enough to slip past a viewer who heard a real statistic a moment earlier. The falsehood lives entirely in the relabeling.
The claim that Philadelphia removed over 50,000 Democrats from its voter rolls is false. The voters in question were moved to inactive status in a routine update, every one of them remains registered, and every one of them can vote in November. Any Pennsylvania voter unsure of their own status can check it and vote regardless of what a broadcast told them happened to their registration.
