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HARRISBURG – Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are pushing to collect personal information on every registered voter in Pennsylvania, as well as a wealth of communications between state and county election officials, in a controversial investigation into the presidential election of 2020.
GOP lawmakers drafted a subpoena, shared with Spotlight PA on Tuesday night, in which they request all communications between state election officials and election officials in each county, as well as the name, the address and partial social security number of each voter. recorded last November.
The subpoena, which is put to a vote in a Senate committee Wednesday morning, is expected to be pushed back by the administration of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, as well as Democrats in the legislature who have called the GOP efforts partisan attacks without foundations intended to undermine President Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.
But Republicans who control the state Senate say they believe the in-depth review is needed due to changes in state guidelines last year to counties on how to handle ballots. by correspondence and the like, and to ensure that there were no irregularities in last year’s election – even though GOP legislative leaders admitted they had no evidence of fraud.
“We have seen an extraordinary number of changes and directions, clarifications and modifications to that guidance ahead of the election,” said Jason Thompson, spokesperson for Senate Speaker Pro Tempore Jake Corman (R., Center). “Certain aspects of this orientation struck us as partisan. “
In an email to Spotlight PA, Wolf spokesperson Lyndsay Kensinger said administration officials have yet to receive a summons. But she said they “continue to firmly oppose any effort that compromises the security and integrity of electoral materials and infrastructure, and undermines confidence in our elections by bringing an Arizona-style circus to Pennsylvania.”
Thompson, a spokesperson for Corman, said Republicans are prepared to fight any litigation from the Wolf administration or others all the way to the state’s highest court – a likely costly and time-consuming process that could delay the investigation of several months or more.
The responsibility for combing through the thousands of documents that could potentially pour in from the subpoena would rest with the staff and lawyers of the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee, which is leading the review. There is no set budget for their investigation, which critics say will cost taxpayers millions of dollars unnecessarily.
Senator Cris Dush, a Conservative Senator from the Jefferson County GOP, is leading the audit. Corman selected Dush for the effort in August, after a dramatic fall-out with Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin) who had been the most ardent supporter in Pennsylvania of a “forensic audit” similar to the one much criticized in Maricopa County, Arizona. .
While in charge, Mastriano threatened to issue his own subpoenas to request election materials in three counties, including Philadelphia, but the orders never came to fruition.
Last week, Dush called a hearing in which Republican senators questioned the actions and motives of state election officials in the county advice publication just days before the November election.
But the subpoena provides the first concrete glimpse into the scope of the GOP review, although Republicans have recently struggled to articulate what exactly the investigation would include.
In the summons, Dush and other Republicans request copies of any State Department directives from county election administrators; all training materials used to prepare county election officials to count votes; information on Pennsylvanians who voted in primary and general elections; and any changes made to the electoral rolls.
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