Williamsport, Pa. — Rep. Dan Meuser recently explained to a room of Lycoming County conservatives why he did not vote to certify Pennsylvania's 2020 presidential electors.
Meuser, representing Pa.'s 9th district, spoke for over an hour to the Lycoming County Patriots, a local conservative organization that opens its meetings with a prayer and a group recitation of a confidentiality pledge. At the Aug. 3 meeting, he took questions from the crowd of about 40 on election security, immigration, Social Security, and gun rights ahead of his run for reelection this November.
On the 2020 election won by President Joe Biden, Meuser said, "They changed the rules weeks before the election. They allowed curative ballots. They said signatures don't need to match. They put drop boxes out there. There was ballot harvesting taking place, which was completely illegal to the tune of tens of thousands," Meuser said, describing why he declined to certify his state's electors. "There were significant irregularities."
No court, state review, or bipartisan election audit has substantiated fraud of the scale Meuser described in Pa.'s 2020 results, which were certified and upheld through litigation.
Asked why Pa. hasn't tightened its election laws the way other states have, Meuser said: "Some states like Arizona and Georgia seem to have done some things with their election law. We've done absolutely nothing." Referring to the state's mail-in voting statute, Meuser said it was an "unbelievably terrible, unconstitutional piece of legislation."
He also said he backs the federal SAVE Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. "Pennsylvania requires absolutely nothing," he said of photo ID requirements at the polls. On voter ID, he said, "it's absolutely ridiculous not requiring it."
Congressman Meuser talks shop with conservative constituents in Montoursville.
Asked whether President Donald Trump might declare a national emergency over election administration before the midterms and have the “military take over the election in November to require paper ballots,” Meuser said he didn't know.
"He follows the law. He follows the Constitution. He follows the courts," he said, but noted that the courts are “biased.”
On mail ballots, Meuser told the group Republicans need roughly a two-to-one advantage over Democrats in mail-in turnout to feel secure heading into the fall. "If we can be two to one, ... that's going to be safe. We're going to win, and that's going to be meaningful to the final count," he said.
Some immigrants ‘do not want to be Americans’
One member asked Meuser about what he called "the Muslim problem in this country," saying it "keeps me up at night" and citing fear of Muslims "wanting to take over and do us in."
"None of us want to classify a group. None of us want to do anything like that. But we judge people on their actions, right? Nothing else. Their actions and their words, to an extent," Meuser responded. "I'm not going to disagree with you. We're seeing what's happening in Europe. There are those — not just necessarily Muslims — that come to our country that do not want to assimilate, that do not want to be Americans."
Meuser then described his grandmother's emigration from Lviv, Ukraine, in 1907, saying her father told her the family would "only speak English" and had her adopt the anglicized name Anne Pred. A member of the audience offered a similar story about her German family that stopped speaking German.
"I think people are waking up to this," Meuser said. "We got to have the proper immigration policies. We can't just allow illegals to come in. We can't allow them when they get here to steal from us, feed from us, tens of billions of dollars, like in Minneapolis and elsewhere."
On birthright citizenship, Meuser said he believes the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause has been "misinterpreted from the very beginning" and that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof means subject to the laws that exist." He said Trump "does have a plan for revisiting it" and expects the issue to return to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fraud task force, SNAP dispute with Shapiro
Meuser said he was recently named to a fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance.
"The portion I'm going to be working on is NGOs that are fraudulent," he said, adding he'd also focus on what he described as an international scam operation run out of Thailand with ties to China.
"I think there's $1 trillion being scammed and lost," he said of federal fraud, waste, and abuse against roughly $7 trillion in federal spending. "Who would doubt that we have at least a 15%, if not a 20% waste, abuse, and fraud taking place?"
He also criticized Gov. Josh Shapiro over a Trump Administration rule requiring states to keep Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program error rates below 5%.
"He has a 13% fraud rate right now, and he's going to get penalized," Meuser said, adding that Shapiro, the former Pa. Attorney General, "sued the Trump administration 18, 19, 20 times."
Social Security, gun rights
Fielding questions from several attendees on Social Security, Meuser was asked why earnings above roughly $165,000 aren't subject to the Social Security tax the way lower incomes are.
"How could I disagree with that? I hear you," he told the member. "Let's consider a bill on that. Maybe I’ll lead that effort."
On increasing the retirement age, he said "it's certainly not the answer," and when asked about claims that Republicans plan to cut benefits by 20%, he said flatly: "No chance."
Meuser said he supports national concealed-carry reciprocity for gun owners, meaning if a gun owner is licensed in one state, they’d be licensed in all: "We're all behind it, believe it or not. There's some Democrats that are behind it. We think we can get it done."
Contrasting with Wallace
Asked to draw a contrast with his opponent, Rachel Wallace, whom Meuser refused to name, he argued she would vote in lockstep with Democratic leadership in Washington regardless of how she campaigns.
"No matter what they say, they all vote the same," he said, naming House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Meuser predicted Wallace would oppose Republican positions on the border, diversity policies in the military, and transgender athletes in girls' sports, and defended his party's stance on those issues. He called the rise in border crossings under President Biden "the worst chaos, unmitigated disaster in the last 100 years."
He held up Sen. John Fetterman as an example of a Democrat willing to break with his party, citing Fetterman's positions on border security, Israel, and policing, even as an attendee noted Fetterman "still votes with the Democrats" most of the time. "Ninety percent of the time," Meuser agreed, but said Wallace would not be similarly independent.
"I know 100% of the Democrats that exist," he said. "She's going to be the one that's different? No."
Wallace has called for at least two debates with incumbent Meuser in the lead-up to November’s midterm elections. Her call comes weeks after local media outlets WVIA and WGAL invited Wallace and Meuser to participate in debates. Wallace has accepted both invitations, while Meuser has yet to agree to either debate, her campaign office announced Aug. 5.
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