New Pennsylvania Project (NEW PA Project)

Background and Activity

The New Pennsylvania Project was founded in 2021 and modeled after the New Georgia Project, which registers racial and ethnic minority voters in Georgia and was credited with aiding the unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign of former State Representative Stacey Abrams (D-Atlanta). A Philadelphia Inquirer report on New PA Project’s founding stated that the New Georgia Project, which Abrams founded in the 2010s, “is on the cutting edge of what’s emerging as the Democrats’ main strategy for 2022 and beyond to fight GOP intransigence on voting rights and outright suppression laws enacted in some Republican-controlled states.” ⁵

The New PA Project was founded by Kadida Kenner, a Democratic political operative and organizer who previously worked for the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and the North Carolina Democratic Party. While at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, she ran the Why Courts Matter PA coalition to support left-of-center judicial nominees. ⁶

The New PA Project is mostly centered on conducting voter-registration campaigns and promoting relaxed voting laws that the group says make it easier to cast a ballot, such as loosening requirements on mail-in voting. Critics of the group have stated such measures make it easier to commit election fraud. ^{1 7 2}

The group has also voiced its opposition to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. CEO Kadida Kenner stated that the group was “deeply disturbed” by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. ⁸

The group’s charitable arm, New PA Project Education Fund, joined a lawsuit led by the American Civil Liberties Union Pennsylvania challenging the handwritten date requirement on mail-in ballots, joined by more than a dozen left-of-center advocacy groups. ⁷

Voter-Fraud Indictment

In the aftermath of the 2024 election, prosecutors in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, charged Jennifer Hill, a former employee of the New Pennsylvania Project, with attempting to fraudulently register four people to vote before the 2024 election; an NBC 10 Philadelphia report said they “includ[ed] her dead father and a person who died inside her home.” Hill worked as a canvasser for the New PA Project on registering voters for the organization. NBC 10 characterized investigators as claiming that “Through an app – provided by the Pennsylvania Department of State – Hill tried to register 310 people to vote between April 2024 and September 2024.” Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer (D) said 181 of those people were successfully registered, while 129 were not successfully registered. ¹

NBC 10 Philadelphia reported that “Investigators noticed multiple names sent by Hill through the app that were variations of the same name with different addresses and emails, according to Stollsteimer. This led to an investigation in which officials determined Hill tried to fraudulently register at least four people, including her dead father, her grandmother, an unidentified person, and a person who died in her home in 2011.” ¹

Hill was successful in registering one of the four individuals, a “fictitious person,” because of what District Attorney Stollsteimer called a “sort of a gap in the system where by putting in no date of birth and no social security number, it goes through and became a verified voter registration.” Stollsteimer stated that the fictitious person did not vote in the 2024 election. ¹

In response to the indictment, the New PA Project issued a statement calling the allegations “heartbreaking” and noting that “we still believe that the process works, and our election systems remain secure. Internally, we have a robust quality control department that works tirelessly to provide training to our canvassers and monitor our processes to ensure we aren’t the problem we seek to overcome.” ⁹

The group also stated, “As a second-chance organization we hire, coach and mentor staff members who are formerly incarcerated, experiencing mental health issues and potentially in recovery. We believe that individuals with various lived experiences make some of the most trusted messengers in the communities we center.” ⁹