When asked at oral argument why plaintiffs delayed bringing the instant challenge for more than two years after the State Department promulgated its guidance, plaintiffs’ counsel initially responded that the United States Department of Justice had recently unsealed a three-year-old indictment of several Iranians for election interference. Plaintiffs found that indictment, which was unsealed on September 27, 2024, to be “very concerning” given “the past history of the Iranians having knowledge of how to exploit the UOCAVA voting system, the FPCA… [and] the federal write-in absentee ballots.” (asserting that “Iranian nationals… demonstrated that bad actors could easily create and submit falsified FPCAs” to interfere with Pennsylvania’s federal elections). But that charging documentreveals no vulnerabilities on the Commonwealth’s part. Indeed, the indictment plainly states that a video “purport[ing] to depict an individual hacking into state voter websites and then using that illicitly obtained voter information to create fraudulent [military-overseas] absentee ballots” was a “simulated intrusion” that did not involve a bona fide state or federal website, adding that the Federal Voting Assistance Program “could not be leveraged in the manner implied by” the video. Pressed for anything that might corroborate whether “there’s been some Iranian influence over Pennsylvania’s overseas ballots,” counsel effectively conceded that all he had was “concerns.” Plaintiffs cannot rely on phantom fears of foreign malfeasance to excuse their lack of diligence