'Really disgusting': GOP slammed by order of nuns accused of election fraud

An order of nuns is fighting back after a GOP operative accused its monastery of being at the center of a scheme to defraud the election in Pennsylvania.

Republican Cliff Maloney publicly stated that the home of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie in Pennsylvania had dozens of voter registrations — yet nobody lived there.

In reality, 55 sisters live there full time — and 53 of them are legally registered to vote.

“To be unjustly accused of voter fraud is just really disgusting, ugly,” Sister Stephanie Schmidt, the order’s prioress, told The Washington Post.

“A simple web search would alert him to our active presence in a number of ministries in Erie.”

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Maloney had posted to nearly 58,000 followers on X that the monastery was an empty building that was being used for fraud.

He said his army of canvassers had “discovered” it when they knocked at the door. “NO ONE lives there,” he exclaimed.

Schmidt said she immediately started receiving complaints from across the country.

“If you’re not a critical thinker, you could just say, ‘Oh, look at that. There’s these sisters trying to get away with a scam,’” Schmidt, 72, said.

“We have to be careful of what we believe. We have to do our homework.”

Maloney still refused to be convinced that the registered votes were legal.

“If we confirm that, great, I encourage them to vote,” he told The Post Wednesday. “If we don’t confirm that, we’ll look at the next step to take to make sure that only legal votes are cast.”

He said his accusations came after a door-knocker arrived at the monastery and reported, “I had a hard time because all I kept seeing was a church but no house.”

The canvasser said a woman told him it was a monastery but nobody lived there.

Schmidt doubted that conversation ever happened. Nobody at the monastery reported speaking to anybody about votes.

“We do take issue with claiming false information as true in an effort to discredit differing views or affiliations,” the order said in a statement.

“We want to be on public record as having called out this fraud so that if the outcome of next month’s election is contested in Pennsylvania our integrity will not be called into question.”

Schmidt said “each sister votes her conscience” and, though the order commits to“working for peace and justice, especially for the rights of women and children, and the climate crisis,” it is not aligned to any party.

“Glad they put the statement out,” Maloney said. “I respect that, but we’re going to dive a little deeper, confirm that that’s correct.”

Schmidt said the sisters are planning legal action.