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For a Republican canvasser going door-to-door to cast votes in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, the address on East Lake Road in Erie must have seemed like heavenly evidence of the widespread voter fraud that many in his party complain since Donald Trump's election defeat against Joe Biden in 2020.

There were 53 registered voters at the address, which housed a Catholic church, but not a single one actually lived there, Cliff Maloney, a conservative activist and founder of The Pennsylvania Chase, claimed on X in a post that quickly went viral.

But there were voters at that address — dozens, in fact. Fifty-five hard-to-miss nuns from the Benedictine Sisters of Erie.

A so-called ballot hunter who goes door-to-door urging voters to return their mail-in ballots had somehow missed the crowded parking lot and busy reception area where nuns strolled between their simple living quarters and the impressive stained glass windows in the chapel .

Maloney leads a group that encourages Republicans to vote by mail and is part of a larger, often coordinated network of conservatives who raise doubts about the security of elections, point to widespread fraud in mail-in ballots, spread unverified stories about machines that Changing votes and urging voters to be vigilant and document suspected wrongdoing.

But the evidence for their concerns remains as tenuous as it was in the 2020 election, and local officials are actively trying to combat the flood of false and misleading claims like Maloney's that are spreading like wildfire on social media.

The monastery has been in Erie since the 1850s and moved to its current building in 1969, funded in part by sisters who formed a real musical group “Sister Act” to raise funds. Most residents have lived there for decades and are deeply involved in the community.

“We have been in Erie since 1856 and do good work. “These sisters do not deserve to be demeaned by the misinformation that we are a deception, that we are an impostor,” said Prioress Sister Stephanie Schmidt.

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