The two candidates for Pennsylvania Senate District 16 disagree sharply on whether ballots that have been cast should be counted.
Jarrett Coleman: 1,713 challenges, dropped the day after the election
In the 2024 general election, Coleman filed 1,713 challenges to mail ballot applications from overseas voters in Bucks and Lehigh counties — including military service members stationed abroad. It was the largest batch filed by anyone in Pennsylvania, part of an effort that targeted more than 3,500 voters statewide. At $10 per challenge, he paid about $17,130. (CBS News)
The Pennsylvania Department of State said: “These challenges are based on theories that courts have repeatedly rejected.”
He withdrew all of them the day after Election Day. (NPR)
That’s the story in a nutshell. The challenges were filed before votes were counted, when they could have kept ballots out. They were dropped as soon as counting was over, when they no longer could.
A bill to move the mail ballot deadline earlier
Coleman wrote Senate Bill 1038 in 2024. Right now, a mail ballot must arrive by 8 p.m. on Election Day. His bill would move that to 5 p.m. the Friday before — so a ballot mailed over the last weekend or on Monday wouldn’t count. (SB 1038)
His reason, in his own words: “the in-person vote should always have primacy over the vote cast by mail.” (Co-sponsorship memo) The bill never got a vote.
One effort tried to throw out ballots already cast. The other would throw out ballots before they’re cast. Neither claimed any fraud. Both shrink the window in which a vote counts.
A court case to keep rejected ballots uncounted
In June 2022, Coleman joined the Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party in a federal lawsuit — on the side opposing voters whose mail ballots had been rejected. More than 260 ballots in Lehigh and Northampton counties had been set aside, either for missing an inner envelope or for arriving late. The case settled about a week later, and those ballots were never counted. (Dondiego v. Lehigh County Board of Elections, No. 22-cv-02111, E.D. Pa.)
To be fair, the case involved a nearby district’s close primary, not his own — but his own race had just turned on the same question.
Who backed his first campaign
Coleman’s 2022 campaign got $106,940 from Bill and Laura Bachenberg. Laura Bachenberg was also the treasurer of his campaign committee from March 2022 to October 2023. Two weeks after taking that job, she gave the committee $50,000. (Pennsylvania Department of State)
Bill Bachenberg was a central figure in the effort to challenge Pennsylvania’s 2020 election. He chaired the slate of Trump electors Pennsylvania Republicans sent to Congress, and he helped fund voting machine examinations — including one in Fulton County that found no fraud. The January 6th Committee subpoenaed him; he faced no charges. He was elected president of the National Rifle Association in 2025. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
A candidate doesn’t automatically share a donor’s views. But Coleman’s biggest early backers were at the center of the effort to overturn the 2020 result — and his own record has been a series of attempts to keep ballots from being counted.
Mark Pinsley: verify, then count
Pinsley is the county’s auditor. His job is to check the records and report what’s actually there. He says elections should work the same way: verify ballots, and count them.
When a process problem causes eligible voters’ ballots to be set aside — a missing envelope, a technicality on an overseas ballot — the answer is to fix the process, not go to court to keep those votes from counting.
Both parties should have a say, and neither should have control. Pinsley says election officials should be chosen for competence and integrity, not party. He points out that Pennsylvania already gives the minority party a role in running elections, and he would strengthen that check. (The Morning Call, October 5, 2026)
The checks are already in place. As he notes, counties recount a sample of ballots after every election, and the state runs an audit before results are certified. Every vote leaves a paper record that can be checked against the count. Pinsley would keep those safeguards strong, give county election offices the money and training they need, publish audit results, and keep elections run by Pennsylvania’s counties, not the federal government.
Pinsley has run in this district before and lost. He doesn’t claim those elections were stolen. He says the person who represents a district should want every eligible vote counted — including the ones cast against him.
Why this matters
You can disagree with Pinsley on the minimum wage or data centers. That’s what elections are for. But every other issue depends on one thing: the votes getting counted.
The general election is November 3, 2026.
