Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania is in an election results certification crisis over the primary, and the state just sued three counties | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

Pennsylvania’s quietly in the middle of an election results certification crisis. Nearly two months after the May 17 primary election, three of the state’s 67 counties have refused to count “undated” mail ballots, defying both an earlier court order and the Pennsylvania Department of State’s requests. The other 64 counties did certify results with the undated ballots, which were received on time but on which voters didn’t write a date as required by law. The department, which oversees elections, either has to certify the results knowing the vote counts are inconsistent — or find a way to force the counties into alignment. But the state has no real power on its own to actually run or regulate elections; it can’t force counties to do many things, let alone certify results a specific way. On Monday, the state sued Berks, Fayette, and Lancaster Counties in Commonwealth Court. The immediate fight is about which votes to count in this election — are they supposed to accept undated mail ballots or throw them out? — and how the law interacts with state and federal court rulings.

Full Article: Pa. sues counties for not counting undated mail ballots from 2022 primary election

Pennsylvania: Fight over 2020 election records lands in court | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

A county judge in Williamsport has to decide whether to force officials to provide voter-by-voter electronic election records after the state Office of Open Records ruled Pennsylvania law makes them confidential. Heather Honey, who heads the Lebanon, Pennsylvania-based firm Haystack Investigations, sought in October a digital copy of Lycoming County’s “cast vote record” for the 2020 General Election in which Democratic challenger Joe Biden unseated Republican President Donald Trump. Lycoming told Honey no, saying Honey was essentially asking for the contents of ballot boxes and voting machines, information that the state Election Code declares off-limits for public inspection. In a January decision, Office of Open Records appeals officer Erin Burlew agreed with the county elections director that the cast vote record “is the digital equivalent of the contents of ballot boxes.” Honey challenged that decision in county court in February, likening the cast vote record to a spreadsheet and describing it as “merely a digital report tallying the results of ballots scanned into a tabulator. The CVR is a report that is prepared after an election from a desktop computer that is not and never was the contents of a ballot box.”

Full Article: Fight over 2020 election records lands in Pennsylvania court | AP News

Pennsylvania Republicans are no closer to re-inspecting Fulton County’s 2020 voting machines | Sam Dunklau/WITF

A planned inspection of a rural Pennsylvania county’s voting equipment from 2020 remains on hold, despite a recent state court decision. South-central Fulton County, encouraged by state Senate Republicans, has been seeking a second inspection of Dominion voting machines that it used during the 2020 election. But the county has been mired in court challenges. At issue is whether Fulton can have its Dominion machines inspected, and whether the Department of State can stop an inspection from happening. Supporters of the effort have not explained how such an inspection would be carried out and have not clearly explained why one is necessary more than a year and a half after the machines were used. Former President Donald Trump, who won 85 percent of the vote there, continues to falsely assert that he lost to President Joe Biden because of systemic ballot fraud and procedural issues. There is no evidence of widespread fraud or machine tampering in Pennsylvania. Fulton County’s latest examination was set to happen in January after Commonwealth Court sided with the county in a lawsuit – but the state Supreme Court halted it when the Department of State appealed the lower court’s decision. It’s been on pause ever since. “I’m just a little frustrated with the Supreme Court for their delay,” said Sen. Cris Dush (R-Cameron), who leads the Senate committee that has spearheaded the latest inspection effort.

Full Article: Pennsylvania Republicans are no closer to re-inspecting Fulton County’s 2020 voting machines | WITF

Pennsylvania court orders counting of undated mail ballots in win for McCormick in his GOP Senate race against Oz | Jeremy Roebuck and Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

A Pennsylvania court on Thursday ordered counties to include undated mail ballots — those that arrived on time but were rejected solely because they were missing a handwritten date on their outer envelopes — in their vote counts. The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court on Thursday ordered counties to include undated mail ballots in their vote counts — a legal victory for GOP Senate candidate David McCormick who had sued to include them in his neck-and-neck primary race against Mehmet Oz. In a 40-page opinion, President Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer described the state’s practice of rejecting ballots that arrived without a required handwritten date from the voter on the outer envelope as a potentially unjust restriction of the right to vote. “The absence of a handwritten date on the exterior envelope could be considered a ‘minor irregularity’ without a compelling reason that justifies the disenfranchisement of otherwise eligible voters,” the judge wrote. Cohn Jubelirer’s ruling Thursday came in the form of a temporary injunction ordering counties to include the undated mail ballots in their vote tally for the state’s May 17 primaries. But in a nod to the provisional nature of her decision, she instructed counties to submit two sets of election results to the state: one with the undated ballots included and one without. That will allow the state to use the correct total should the ruling be reversed. If the final ruling mirrors the one she issued Thursday — and it withstands appeal — it would mean potentially thousands of votes are counted in future elections that previously would have been rejected. In the short term, however, it seems unlikely that the fresh votes that McCormick would pick up from among the roughly 800 undated Republican mail ballots in this year’s primary would be enough to push McCormick into the lead. He trails Oz by about 1,000 votes out of more than 1.3 million cast.

Full Article: Pennsylvania court orders counting of undated mail ballots in win for McCormick in his GOP Senate race against Oz

Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate primary heads to a recount as Oz and McCormick scrap over ballots in court | Jonathan Lai, Jeremy Roebuck, and Julia Terruso/Philadelphia Inquirer

It’s official: The razor’s edge primary contest between GOP Senate candidates Mehmet Oz and David McCormick is headed to a recount, state elections officials announced Wednesday, ensuring that the victor in the closely watched race won’t be officially declared for at least two weeks. The announcement came even as counties continued to tally lingering batches of ballots and the gap between the two candidates dwindled to fewer than 1,000 votes. Speaking at a news conference in Harrisburg, acting Secretary of State Leigh M. Chapman said that Oz led McCormick by just 902 votes, or less than 0.08% of the more than 1.3 million ballots cast in their race. By Wednesday evening the margin had shrunk even further. That put their contest well within the 0.5% margin of victory that triggers an automatic recount under state law. And as Pennsylvania’s 67 counties prepared to begin the retallying process as early as Friday, Chapman vowed the recount would take place “transparently, as dictated by law.” “I know Pennsylvanians and, indeed, people throughout the country have been following this race attentively and are eagerly awaiting the results,” she said. “I thank everyone for their patience as we count every vote.”

Full Article: Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate primary heads to a recount as Oz and McCormick scrap over ballots in court

Pennsylvania: National GOP intervenes in Senate race vote-counting lawsuit | arc Levy/Associated Press

The national and state Republican parties are taking the same side as celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s neck-and-neck GOP primary contest for U.S. Senate and opposing a lawsuit that could help former hedge fund CEO David McCormick close the gap in votes. McCormick’s lawsuit was filed late Monday, less than 24 hours before Tuesday’s deadline for counties to report their unofficial results to the state. In it, McCormick asks the state Commonwealth Court to require counties to obey a brand-new federal appeals court decision and promptly count mail-in ballots that lack a required handwritten date on the return envelope. Oz, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has pressed counties not to count the ballots and the Republican National Committee and state GOP said they would go to court to oppose McCormick. In a statement, the RNC’s chief counsel, Matt Raymer, said “election laws are meant to be followed, and changing the rules when ballots are already being counted harms the integrity of our elections.” Meanwhile, Tuesday, Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration issued guidance to counties saying that any ballots without dates must be counted, citing the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision from Friday.

Full Article: GOP intervenes in Pa. Senate race vote-counting lawsuit | AP News

Pennsylvania: U.S. Supreme Court stay on undated mail ballots injects uncertainty into Senate vote count | Jeremy Roebuck, Jonathan Lai, and Sean Collins Walsh/Philadelphia Inquirer

The U.S. Supreme Court injected fresh uncertainty Tuesday into the ongoing Republican primary recount for Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race by temporarily blocking a lower court order on the counting of undated mail ballots, which have become a flash point in the close contest between Mehmet Oz and David McCormick. The two-sentence order — issued by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who oversees emergency matters arising from Pennsylvania for the court — threw a new variable into the high-stakes contest by blocking undated ballots from being counted in an unrelated election from Lehigh County last November. It came just hours after McCormick — who has pushed for undated ballots to be counted — appeared to make progress convincing the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court to side with his view. The new cloud of uncertainty came as more counties began recounting votes in the race. Initial results show McCormick trailing Oz by fewer than 1,000 votes out of more than 1.3 million cast. The narrow margin has triggered an automatic recount to verify the winner, who will face Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in November. McCormick on Tuesday opened a new front in the court battles over which votes should count with a lawsuit seeking a hand recount of all ballots in 150 precincts in 12 Pennsylvania counties. The immediate impact of Alito’s order on the Senate race remains to be seen. It focused solely on the counting of votes in a contested 2021 judicial race in Lehigh County. But much like the lower court ruling that prompted Alito’s intervention Tuesday, its repercussions could reverberate widely.

Full Article: Pa. Republican Senate primary: U.S. Supreme Court issues stay on undated mail ballot issue

Pennsylvania Department of State addresses three Election Day issues, including two in midstate counties | Robby Brod/WITF

Pennsylvania’s primaries mostly went smoothly, but there were three incidents that prompted state officials to respond. Leigh Chapman, Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of state, said about 22,000 mail-in ballots in Lancaster County printed by a new vendor had a code that couldn’t be read by the scanner. “To address this, the department recommends the best practice of assigning two-person teams to handmark new ballots. One will read out the marking from the original ballot; the second person will mark the ballot,” she said. “There’s also an observer who watches the process to make sure the re-marked ballot is accurate.” She said it will take “days” to count the affected ballots, which involves hand-counting them and putting them through the county-owned optical scan machine. Chapman said other counties in Pennsylvania use the same vendor, but the issue was contained to the Lancaster County ballots. Election officials in Berks County reported programming errors with their new electronic poll books. As a result, some polling places opened late, and lines were reported at about two dozen precincts.

Full Article: Pennsylvania Department of State addresses three Election Day issues, including two in midstate counties | WITF

Pennsylvania: Inside the Lancaster County operation where staff are remarking 16,000 mail ballots that could decide the GOP U.S. Senate primary | Gillian McGoldrick/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The fate of Tuesday’s Republican U.S. Senate primary race has come down to two of the state’s most populous counties — Lancaster and Allegheny — where there are still potentially significant numbers of ballots uncounted in a contest that’s still too close to call. Lancaster County is one of the most populated Republican strongholds in the state, meaning the remaining Republican ballots — approximately 5,500, according to the county’s GOP chair — likely will help decide the outcome of this race. Candidates Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick were still within recount territory — within 0.5% of one another — as of Wednesday afternoon. In Allegheny County, a small number of votes are still uncounted — about 2%. But in a race this close, any of those votes could change the outcome of the election. Those results aren’t expected to be posted until Friday, according to county officials. Christa Miller, the chief elections clerk in Lancaster County, her staff and elections volunteers, are responsible for remarking 16,000 ballots that wouldn’t scan on Tuesday due to a printer error.

Full Article: Inside the Lancaster County operation where staff are remarking 16,000 mail ballots that could decide the GOP U.S. Senate primary | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pennsylvania elections chief concerned about voter intimidation, says primary results might be delayed | Teresa Boeckel/York Daily Record

Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Leigh Chapman voiced concerns about voter intimidation in one Pennsylvania county where a district attorney plans to have detectives watch a drop box. Her remarks came Thursday as she addressed questions from the news media about the May 17 primary. Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin plans to have detectives monitor drop boxes, and anyone who drops off more than one ballot could face a fine or jail time, media outlets have reported. Voters are only allowed to return their own ballot unless they have a disability and a designated agent to submit it. Martin has told news media an investigation showed “hundreds” of voters turned in more than one ballot during the 2021 election. Chapman said no evidence exists of widespread voter fraud through ballot drop boxes.

Full Article: Voter intimidation, delayed primary results possible, PA official says

Pennsylvania: Voting machine maker Dominion wins appeal in GOP election inquiry | Associated Press

Dominion Voting Systems won an appeal in Pennsylvania’s highest court on Monday in a bid to ensure that any inspection of its voting machines as part of Republican lawmakers’ inquiry into Pennsylvania’s 2020 election be done by a laboratory that has specific credentials. The Democratic-majority state Supreme Court ruled 5-2, along party lines, to overturn a January decision by a Republican judge on the lower Commonwealth Court. That judge ruled that Dominion could not intervene in a wider case involving an inspection of its equipment used by heavily Republican Fulton County in 2020′s election.

Full Article: Voting machine maker wins appeal in GOP election inquiry | AP News

Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law has its day in Supreme Court | Stephen Caruso/Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Roles were reversed in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday, as attorneys argued over the fate of the state’s three-year-old mail-in voting law, with lawyers for Gov. Tom Wolf arguing to protect legislative power, and lawyers for 14 dissident lawmakers arguing to undo a law that 11 of them had voted to approve. The law, known as Act 77, was declared unconstitutional in a 3-2 January decision by the state’s Commonwealth Court, as it ruled on two challenges to the law — one brought by the Republican lawmakers, as well as a separate one from Bradford County Commissioner Doug McClinko. Act 77 was approved in a deal between the GOP-controlled General Assembly and Democrat Wolf, in which the General Assembly passed no-excuse absentee ballots, and Wolf agreed to eliminate straight-ticket voting. The bill also provided funding to counties to replace decertified voting machines. It passed with near-unanimous Republican support. But a three-judge Commonwealth Court panel that initially invalidated the law ruled that universal mail-in balloting should have been passed as a constitutional amendment, which requires a referendum, rather than as a statute signed into law.

Source: Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law has its day in Supreme Court – Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Pennsylvania: Election experts advise senators to initiate pre-canvassing | Eric Scicchitano/The Daily Item

Bipartisan policy experts advocated during a Senate committee hearing Tuesday that Pennsylvania lawmakers establish a pre-canvassing period that would allow election workers at least three days ahead of an election to prepare mail-in ballots for the formal count. The lack of a pre-canvassing period before polls open causes delays in processing and counting votes now that mail-in ballots are available to any registered elector. This most infamously occurred during the 2020 presidential election when a record 2.6 million mail-in ballots were returned. Local election officials warned months ahead that there would be backups in counting votes. The counts lasted days in many counties, allowing false claims of voter fraud to build. “Extended periods are ripe for the spread of misinformation and disinformation, as we saw in 2020 when former President Trump declared he won the state long before sufficient results were in. This long window was not only predictable but also avoidable,” said Matthew Weil, director of the Elections Project of the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) in Washington, D.C. … Weil told committee members seven days or longer would be best for pre-canvassing. However, he supports the three days suggested in Senate Bill 878, introduced last September by state Sen. David Argall, R-Berks/Schuylkill, and state Sen. Sharif Street, D-Philadelphia.

Full Article: Election experts advise PA senators to initiate pre-canvassing | Don’t Miss This | itemonline.com

A Pennsylvania court overturned the state’s mail voting law, but an appeal means it’s still in place | Jonathan Lai and Andrew Seidman/Philadelphia Inquirer

A Pennsylvania court on Friday struck down the state’s mail voting law, saying the state constitution requires voters to cast ballots in person unless they meet specific requirements. That almost certainly won’t be the final word on the matter, as the state quickly appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, triggering an automatic stay of the decision and leaving Act 77 in place while the high court considers the case. And Democrats believe the Supreme Court, which has a Democratic majority, will uphold the law. Democrats had feared for months that the state’s Commonwealth Court, with its Republican majority, would strike down Act 77. “This opinion is based on twisted logic and faulty reasoning, and is wrong on the law,” state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the leading Democratic candidate for governor, said on Twitter. “We are confident that Act 77 will ultimately be upheld as constitutional.” The final outcome aside, the ruling may add momentum to a GOP push in Harrisburg to enact more restrictive voting laws. Republican candidates for governor celebrated the ruling, and former President Donald Trump issued a statement saying a “great patriotic spirit is developing at a level that nobody thought possible.”

Full Article: Pennsylvania mail voting law Act 77 overturned by Commonwealth Court, state appeals

Court throws Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law into doubt | Marc Levy/Associated Press

A court declared Friday that Pennsylvania’s expansive 2-year-old mail-in voting law violates the state constitution, agreeing with challenges by Republicans who soured on the practice after former President Donald Trump began baselessly attacked it as rife with fraud in his 2020 reelection campaign. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration swiftly appealed to the state Supreme Court, immediately putting the party-line decision by a panel of three Republican and two Democratic judges on hold and stopping it from overturning the law. Still, it throws Pennsylvania’s voting laws into doubt as the presidential battleground state’s voters prepare to elect a new governor and a new U.S. senator in 2022. Just over 2.5 million people voted under the law’s expansion of mail-in voting in 2020′s presidential election, most of them Democrats, out of 6.9 million total cast. Wolf’s office said its appeal means the lower court ruling has no immediate effect, and criticized Republicans as trying to kill the law “in the service of the ‘big lie’” of Trump’s baseless election fraud claims. “We need leaders to support removing more barriers to voting, not trying to silence the people,” Wolf’s office said.

Full Article: Court throws Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law into doubt | AP News

Pennsylvania: Court puts hold on GOP inspection of county voting machines | Marc Levy and Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

 An inspection of voting machines in a heavily Republican county in Pennsylvania as part of a GOP “investigation” into the 2020 presidential election was moments away from starting Friday until the state Supreme Court put it on hold. The high court decision came hours after a state judge rejected attempts by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration to block the inspection — inspired by former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about fraud in the 2020 election he lost — without an agreements over procedure in place. The undertaking comes after Republicans carried out a partisan and widely discredited “audit” in Arizona’s most heavily populated county and Trump and his allies have pressured allies in battleground states he lost to seek out fraud to validate their conspiracy theories. The justices overruled the lower court by granting an emergency request by the governor’s lawyers to stop it for now. The equipment in question — computers, electronic pollbooks, ballot scanners and possibly more — was about to be wheeled in to a special meeting of the Fulton County commissioners just after it started Friday when a lawyer for the county, Tom Breth, said it had to be postponed because the state Supreme Court’s filing office had just notified him the temporary stay was granted.

Full Article: Court puts hold on GOP inspection of county voting machines | AP News

Pennsylvania county’s voting machine review has its roots in 2020 election fraud lies | Sam Dunklau/WITF

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court temporarily blocked a data security company hired by state Senate Republicans from examining Fulton County’s voting machines last week. But a legal team representing the county is fighting to get the probe back on track. The standoff has put the focus on those leading that effort, and on questions about the process that remain unanswered. Those who have instigated and supported looking at Fulton County’s machines have ties to organizations and lawmakers who have backed false claims about the last presidential election. The probe is part of a push by a Republican-led state Senate committee, chaired by Sen. Cris Dush (R-Cameron), to investigate Pennsylvania’s last several elections, despite audits confirming results and a previous Senate election review that yielded suggestions about how to make Election Day run more smoothly in Pennsylvania. Dush and others haven’t been clear about why they want to probe Fulton County’s voting machines. But lawyer Thomas Breth of western Pennsylvania firm Dillon McCandless King Coulter & Graham, who is representing the county, said it doesn’t matter. “We’re not going to second-guess a request coming from the chairman of a committee within the Pennsylvania Senate. As a governmental entity ourselves, we have a constitutional obligation to cooperate with other governmental entities,” Breth said before the Supreme Court court decision Friday.

Full Article: A Pennsylvania county’s voting machine review has its roots in 2020 election fraud lies | WITF

Pennsylvania court declines request to quash Senate GOP election investigation subpoena, needs more time for review | Marley Parrish/Pennsylvania Capital-Star

The legislative subpoena issued as part of the taxpayer-funded election investigation is on hold, following a Monday Commonwealth Court decision to take more time to evaluate a Senate panel’s request for millions of voters’ driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. That means the legal request, issued by the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee in a September vote along party lines, is delayed as the case enters into a fact-finding hearing with discovery and witness testimony. The unsigned, 7-page order comes nearly a month after a panel of five judges heard arguments in the case brought by legislative Democrats and Attorney General Josh Shapiro to challenge the review of the 2020 general and 2021 primary elections. They have also raised concerns that Envoy Sage, LLC, an Iowa-based company selected for the investigation, has not outlined specific security measures and has no direct election-related experience. The Commonwealth Court said that it could not conclude that challengers affirmed “a clear, legal right to quash the subpoena” by arguing that the seldom-used Senate panel does not have the legislative power to request voters’ identifying information. The court also wrote that there is “substantial factual question surrounding the federal protection requirements and the capability of the Senate committee’s contracted vendor, Envoy Sage, LLC, to protect the infrastructure information.” Most of the requested information is publicly available. State law, however, prohibits the public release of someone’s driver’s license number and Social Security number.

Full Article: Pa. court declines request to quash Senate GOP election investigation subpoena, needs more time for review – Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Pennsylvania court asked to require accredited lab in GOP ‘investigation’ | Associated Press

Dominion Voting Systems has asked a court to restrict any inspection of its voting machines as part of what Republican lawmakers call a “forensic investigation” of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election to a laboratory that has specific credentials. The Denver-based voting-system manufacturer filed paperwork in court Monday evening as Republican lawmakers move to inspect Dominion’s machines and software in southern Pennsylvania’s sparsely populated Fulton County using an unaccredited contractor that has no election experience. In its court papers, Dominion requested an order requiring that any inspection be conducted by a federally accredited voting system test lab or a national laboratory used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Fulton county heavily backed former President Donald Trump, whose baseless claims about election fraud in 2020′s presidential election have propelled various Republican endeavors to search for fraud in states Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Full Article: Court asked to require accredited lab in GOP ‘investigation’ | AP News

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf will appoint mail voting advocate Leigh M. Chapman to be new top elections official | Philadelphia Inquirer

Gov. Tom Wolf plans to appoint Leigh M. Chapman, a lawyer who leads a nonprofit that promotes mail voting, to be the state’s next top elections official, tasking her with overseeing a midterm election cycle that will bring national scrutiny to Pennsylvania while the state fends off continued GOP attacks stemming from the 2020 presidential election. Chapman will become acting secretary of the commonwealth on Jan. 8, Wolf announced Monday. She previously served as policy director in the agency she will soon head, the Department of State, from 2015 to 2017. “Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure that voting rights are protected, and to improve access to the ballot box,” Chapman said. “I look forward to continuing that work in my new role, and to build on the tremendously successful election reforms in Pennsylvania over the last several years.” Chapman will replace Veronica Degraffenreid, who received praise from Wolf for overseeing the office in an acting capacity following the February resignation of the last permanent secretary, Kathy Boockvar. Wolf originally intended to elevate Degraffenreid to a permanent role in the office but withdrew the nomination after she clashed with Senate Republicans over their controversial review of the 2020 presidential election. She will become a special adviser to Wolf after Chapman takes over the department. Wolf’s announcement Monday was silent on whether he intended Chapman to assume the secretary role on a permanent basis, which would require legislative confirmation. “She will be acting secretary, where she will be able to perform the full duties and responsibilities of a confirmed secretary,” Wolf spokesperson Elizabeth Rementer said in a separate statement.

Full Article: Gov. Tom Wolf will appoint mail voting advocate Leigh M. Chapman to be Pa.’s new top elections official

Pennsylvania judge rules Republicans have to wait until next month before working out rules for inspection of voting machines | Associated Press

Full Article: Republicans have to wait until next month before working out rules for inspection of voting machines, Pennsylvania judge rules – The Morning Call

Pennsylvania: Court battle over GOP’s subpoena of sensitive voter data centers on legislative power vs. privacy | Danielle Ohl/Spotlight PA

An appellate court leveled sharp questions Wednesday in the opening round of a closely watched court case over whether Republicans in the state Senate have the power to subpoena sensitive voter information as part of a partisan inquiry into the 2020 election. A coalition of Democrats is seeking an order quashing the subpoena and argues it goes too far by requesting information — including the names, addresses, and partial Social Security numbers — for nearly 9 million registered voters in the state. Republicans who control the state Senate say they believe the sweeping review is necessary to ensure that there were no irregularities in the 2020 election, citing the state’s evolving guidance last year about how counties should handle mail-in and other ballots. GOP legislative leaders have acknowledged, however, that they have found no evidence of fraud. Several official reviews have affirmed the outcome of Pennsylvania’s election. Lawyers for Senate Democrats, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, and Sen. Art Haywood and his wife Julie Haywood, as private citizens, argued that a balancing test should be applied to weigh the necessity of the investigation against the possible disclosure of private information. The Democrats were joined by the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

Full Article: Court battle over Pa. GOP’s subpoena of sensitive voter data centers on legislative power vs. privacy · Spotlight PA

Pennsylvania: Questions remain about GOP’s election ‘investigation’ | Marc Levy/Associated Press

Many questions remain unanswered Tuesday as to what Republicans in Pennsylvania’s Senate can accomplish from what they call a “forensic investigation” into last year’s presidential election now that they have hired a contractor that has not pointed to any experience in elections. Senate Republicans last week hired the Iowa-based Envoy Sage onto a $270,000 contract to help carry out the undertaking, fueled by pressure from former President Donald Trump and his allies in a search for fraud across battleground states to back up their baseless allegations that the election was stolen. In a brief conference call with reporters Tuesday, Steve Lahr, Envoy Sage’s president, said the company could hire people or subcontractors with expertise, if necessary. … Mark Lindeman, a political scientist who has written on and consulted on post-election audits, said many people have experience in working closely with various kinds of election records and equipment, such as paper ballots, vote totals and registration and voting records. “Experience matters because novices can misinterpret the routine quirks of elections as anomalies or evidence of fraud,” said Lindeman, who works for Verified Voting, which advocates for election integrity and the responsible use of election technology. For instance, Lindeman said, Republicans’ widely discredited election “audit” carried out in Arizona’s Maricopa County was riddled with unfounded allegations based on basic misunderstandings. “Inexperienced, partisan consultants tend to leap to invidious conclusions,” Lindeman said. “They shouldn’t lead serious investigations.”

Full Article: Questions remain about GOP’s election ‘investigation’ | AP News

Pennsylvania House Republicans threaten to remove Lehigh County elections board unless it rescinds acceptance of undated ballots | Ford Turner/The Morning Call

Full Article: Pennsylvania House Republicans threaten to remove Lehigh County elections board unless it rescinds acceptance of undated ballots – The Morning Call

Pennsylvania Senate GOP identifies vendor that will ‘conduct a thorough and impartial election investigation’ | Jan Murphy/PennLive

The GOP-led Senate committee has identified the private contractor it will hire to assist in its taxpayer-funded review of the 2020 presidential election. A document shared with Republican senators Thursday evening obtained by PennLive identifies the firm as Dubuque, Iowa-based Envoy Sage LLC. The firm bills itself on its website as “delivering ground truth” and identifies itself as specializing in research, investigation, program management and communications. The document states the firm “meets all the key needs to conduct a thorough and impartial election investigation.” It also states the firm has no political association with candidates who appeared on the 2020 or 2021 ballots in Pennsylvania. Among other qualifications it lists, Envoy Sage has worked with the Department of Defense under Republican and Democratic administrations and has decades of experience in handling sensitive and classified information. Senate Republican spokesman Jason Thompson declined comment about the document. It doesn’t indicate how much the firm will be paid although the costs will come out of the GOP caucus’ accounts.

Full Article: Senate GOP identifies vendor that will ‘conduct a thorough and impartial election investigation’ – pennlive.com

Pennsylvania’s Desperate Scramble to Stop an Insider Election Threat | Russell Berman/The Atlantic

The people who fear the most for the future of American democracy weren’t watching the election returns in Virginia and New Jersey earlier this month for clues about next year’s midterms. These voting-rights advocates didn’t pay much attention to who won mayoral or school-board races. Instead, they’ve spent the past two weeks trying to discern how many Donald Trump loyalists captured control of elections in a pivotal 2024 swing state: Pennsylvania. Voters across the Keystone State decided who will run their polling places in the next two elections, but you could forgive them if they didn’t realize it. Buried near the bottom of their ballots on November 2 were a pair of posts: judge of elections and inspector of elections, bureaucratic titles that most people have never heard of. In many counties, the contests didn’t even make the first page of local races, falling far beneath those for supreme-court justice, county executive, and the school board—even tax collector and constable merited higher placement. Yet the people who hold these election positions will play an important—if often overlooked—role in determining whether elections in Pennsylvania go off smoothly. Grassroots Republican supporters of Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat targeted these posts throughout the state, and many of them won their race last week. “There hasn’t been a sophisticated, concerted effort to sabotage elections like the one we’re facing now,” Scott Seeborg, the Pennsylvania state director for the nonpartisan group All Voting Is Local, told me. For the next four years, judges and inspectors of elections will supervise polling places and ensure that votes are properly tabulated. Individually, they preside over a single precinct covering, at most, a few thousand ballots. But in the aggregate, the decisions made at such a hyperlocal level could tip close statewide or congressional elections, says Victoria Bassetti, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center. “It could add up, precinct after precinct after precinct,” Bassetti told me. Biased judges or inspectors might, directly or indirectly, skew a vote or two per precinct. “If people who are biased are elected to serve in these local positions anywhere in the country,” she said, “it ultimately could have a huge impact on how our democracy functions.”

Full Article: Pennsylvania Hopes to Stop an Insider Election Threat – The Atlantic

Pennsylvania judge race with narrow margin will get recount | Mark Scolforo/Associated Press

The results of a tight race for a seat on the statewide Commonwealth Court will be recounted because two candidates finished within a half-percentage point of each other in last week’s election, the Pennsylvania Department of State announced Wednesday. The race pits Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Lori Dumas, the Democrat, against former Pennsylvania Senate Republican aide Drew Crompton, who was appointed last year to fill a Commonwealth Court vacancy until a replacement could be elected. Commonwealth Court handles cases involving state government and local governments. Two seats on Commonwealth Court were on the ballot, both held most recently by Republicans. The lead vote-getter last week, McKean County Republican lawyer Stacy Wallace, is deemed to have secured one of them, the department said. For the second seat, unofficial returns have Dumas leading Crompton by nearly 17,000 votes, well within the margin for a government-paid recount. Those unofficial returns show Dumas with 1.29 million votes, or 25.36%, and Crompton with 1.27 million votes, or 25.03%.

Full Article: Pennsylvania judge race with narrow margin will get recount

Pennsylvania’s election was sleepy compared with 2020. Some voters still saw high stakes: ‘The country’s just in such a state.’ | Andrew Seidman and Julia Terruso/Philadelphia Inquirer

In some ways, the 2021 election was similar to last year’s. Lots of Pennsylvania voters chose to cast ballots by mail — about 736,000 as of Tuesday afternoon, something not possible a couple of years ago. And partisan tensions flared at some polls, with debate over the future of the country, even in highly contentious school board races. But in most ways, Tuesday’s election was nothing like 2020. The glare of the national spotlight on Pennsylvania had faded. Elections officials said the process was relatively smooth and complaint-free. And unlike last year’s record, officials were expecting a low turnout typical for off-year elections. In one marquee race, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner was projected to handily win reelection against Republican Chuck Peruto, the expected outcome in a city with seven times as many Democrats as Republicans. But in other races, the night was shaping up as a strong night for the GOP. A little before 1 a.m., New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was in an unexpectedly tight battle with Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli. And minutes later, the Associated Press projected Republican Kevin Brobson would beat Democrat Maria McLaughlin for a seat on Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court. In perhaps the nation’s highest-profile race — in Virginia, the only state other than New Jersey picking a governor —Republican Glenn Youngkin topped Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who previously held the office. Both parties will be scrutinizing the results in those and other races for evidence about the views of the electorate as they prepare for the first midterm election of Joe Biden’s presidency next year. Republicans were hoping to capitalize on Biden’s declining approval ratings, voters’ discontent with rising inflation, and controversy over how race is taught in public schools to win contests in blue states like Virginia and purple ones like Pennsylvania. And such divisions were apparent even in municipal elections. “The country’s just in such a state,” said Donna Weickel, 77, after she and her husband cast their votes for Republicans in Buckingham Township, Bucks County.

Full Article: Pa.’s election was sleepy compared with 2020. Some voters still saw high stakes: ‘The country’s just in such a state.’

Pennsylvania: Republican lawsuit over mail-in ballots in Delaware County dismissed by judge | Rob Tornoe/Philadelphia Inquirer

A petition over 670 flawed mail-in ballots filed by a lawyer for two Republican candidates running for Delaware County Council was largely dismissed ahead of Tuesday’s election. The lawsuit, filed by longtime Republican lawyer Michael Puppio, asked for an emergency hearing over the absentee ballots that Delaware County acknowledged were mailed to the wrong addresses, as well as more than 5,000 ballots that were mailed out late by a vendor. Common Pleas Court Judge Kelly Eckel dismissed the bulk of the lawsuit Monday night, ruling that the board of election will continue to oversee Tuesday’s election after putting safeguards in place and correcting the ballot issues. The judge will allow two watchers — one from each political party — to monitor the mail-in ballots in Delaware County for any irregularities. The 670 ballots in question were mailed to addresses that did not match the voter information on the ballot inside. The county said it has taken steps to identify those ballots and send new ones to the voters who received them. Delaware County Solicitor Bill Martin criticized Republicans for attempting to wrestle control of the election out of the hands of the county board of elections over an issue he said had already been “appropriately remedied.”

Full Article: Republican lawsuit over mail-in ballots in Delaware County dismissed by judge

Pennsylvania voting official sues Trump, Giuliani, others over 2020 allegations | Betsy Woddruff Swan, Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein/Politico

Full Article: Pa. voting official sues Trump, Giuliani, others over 2020 allegations – POLITICO