Since the recent presidential election, Republicans have claimed fraud, without producing much significant evidence in numerous court cases, while Democrats have generally dismissed the allegations, saying the equivalent of “there’s nothing to see here.”

There is evidence, however, that if there were fraud, there wasn’t nearly enough of it to shift the outcome, according to the chairman of the Political Science Department at Grove City College, rated by niche.com as the most conservative college in Pennsylvania.

Professor Michael Coulter is confident the outcome of the presidential election is valid largely due to the nature of the election process — including procedural protections for mail-in voting, the method that has been the focus of the Trump campaign’s fraud allegations.

At the Mirror’s request, officials from Delaware County, one of several counties targeted by the Trump campaign after the election, outlined the mail-ballot security measures they followed to ensure against cheating.

Several of the protections were state requirements, while others “represent an effort by the Delco board above and beyond the law, to ensure ballot security and public confidence,” stated county spokesman Ryan Herlinger in an email.

While in-person voters from Delaware County on election day split 49 percent to 49 percent between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate and now President-elect Joe Biden, mail voters went 83 percent to 15 percent for Biden, according to the county website.

Biden won Delaware County 66 percent to 32 percent, or 206,000 votes to 118,000.

The protections, as compiled by the Delaware County Board of Elections solicitor:

– The county confirmed that each applicant for a mail ballot was a registered voter.

– The county checked for a valid ID for each mail ballot applicant.

– Those supplying false information when applying for a ballot faced criminal penalties.

– The county checked to ensure that the voter’s name on each mail ballot returned to the county corresponded to a registered voter’s name on file.

– Every day, two-person, bipartisan teams comprising furloughed county supervisors who had been sworn in as Election Board staffers, and who were subject to criminal penalties for malfeasance, retrieved ballots from drop boxes.

– The ballots retrieved from drop boxes were tracked with chain-of-custody forms, documenting the number of ballots removed from each box and delivered to the Bureau of Elections office.

– All the drop boxes were under video and/or human surveillance at all times when in use, with video surveillance conducted by a county park police officer.

– All mail and absentee ballots received via the postal service, from a drop box or by any other means were immediately secured in a locked ballot room to which only three of the senior members of the bureau had a key card for entry. The ballot room is within the bureau office, accessible only by going through building security in the main lobby.

– Authorized observers from both parties could observe pre-canvassing of mail ballots, which began at 7 a.m. Election Day, and canvassing of those ballots, which could begin at 8 p.m. Election Day, in person in the bureau office from multiple observer areas. Party observers also were allowed to conduct in-person inspections of the ballot room every two hours under supervision of bureau staff.

– The pre-canvassing and canvassing were live-streamed around the clock on the bureau website, “simultaneously via 11 separate camera angles,” and there was also a camera inside the ballot room that allowed for around the clock monitoring of that room for anyone with internet access.

– Throughout pre-canvassing and canvassing, the entrance to the bureau office was staffed by park police officers and throughout the time of ballot opening and counting, one or more deputies from the Delaware County Sheriff’s Department were present in the bureau office.

– All three bureau staff members who had key-card access to the ballot room were longtime bureau employees, and all were hired by and served for many years under Delaware County government when it was controlled by the Republican Party, including the chief clerk, who served for 15 years under the Republican administration until January of this year, when the Delaware County Council majority became Democratic for the first time in 100 years.

Among other general protections, according to Coulter:

– All county election boards have representatives from both major parties, Coulter said.

– All counties have paper documentation that can be used to verify results.

– Each county counts its own ballots, so that there is not one central location that could in theory be more vulnerable to manipulation.

At least some of the continuing Republican effort is directed toward trying to show that at least some mail ballot protections weren’t followed in Pennsylvania.

In an open letter to Gov. Tom Wolf on Dec. 2, signed by 32 state representatives, including Rep. Jim Gregory, R-Hollidaysburg, the Republicans asked the governor to convene a special session in December “to be actively engaged in continued oversight of this election to ensure the integrity of the process.”

Among other things, the Republicans asked for logs indicating when dropbox ballots were collected and delivered, logs denoting who made deliveries from dropboxes and who had access to dropbox keys and when that access was obtained; logs indicating when ballots were collected and delivered from temporary satellite offices, and who had access to those ballots; a list of all “private persons” deputized to collect ballots through mobile pick up efforts; and an explanation of how Philadelphia had ballots delivered to the Pennsylvania Convention Center Nov. 3 and 4.

Republicans have accused Democrats of submitting ballots in the names of dead people, but as Lt. Gov. John Fetterman has pointed out, a man in Luzerne County who tried that was caught, Coulter said.

The Trump campaign found the ballot of one person who’d died, but that person had sent her ballot by mail when she was alive in October, he said.

If the names of thousands of dead people had been used, “we would have heard about it,” Coulter said.

Moreover, there is an active program in Pennsylvania for the removal of the names of deceased people from the rolls, he said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.