Sister Stephanie Schmidt of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania spoke out to CNN's Boris Sanchez on Friday after a local Republican operative falsely accused her order of nuns of voter fraud, claiming the monastery used as a registration address was an empty building — despite it being the permanent home of 55 sisters.
"I had a friend text me this post, I'm not a follower of X or Twitter or any of that stuff, but she texted me and when I read it, I was first in disbelief and shocked, and then when I read it again, I was outraged, because they were accusing this community of voter fraud and that is so wrong," said Schmidt.
"We have a responsibility, I thought, to speak up clearly and quickly, and to defend ourselves in defending the truth. this is misinformation."
"We appreciate that effort very much," said Sanchez.
"We're standing up for the truth and we're speaking out for integrity," said Schmidt. "This election, this campaign, the social media has just been filled with so many lies and so much misinformation that we've got to stop it and we've got to encourage other people, wake up, don't believe everything you read. It's not true."
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She added that if the GOP operative who made the claim, Cliff Maloney, "had done his homework and his research, even a phone call here, he would have realized that this was not the case. Many people live here."
Sanchez noted that Maloney was asked to comment by CNN and declined.
"If you could send a message to him, what would you say?" the anchor asked Schmidt.
"He would be welcome to come and meet with us and see that we are real living people," said Schmidt. "And we would ask him to publicly correct that information, which was a lie, that he would be public in taking that back and defending the truth.
"This community's reputation should not be maligned by someone who doesn't even know us. It's just wrong." She added, "We are a nonpartisan group. We do not vote for a particular individual. There are 55 registered voters here, yes, but each sister votes her conscience. I have no idea who votes what way, unless they tell me."
All of this comes as on the other side of the state, local prosecutors have unveiled what they call a plot to illegally rack up fake voter registrations in heavily Republican Lancaster County.
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