Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers continue election attacks, promise report on ‘sizable irregularities’

A group of state GOP lawmakers contesting the result of the Nov. 3 election is continuing a “forensic investigation,” even as their efforts to bring a resolution seeking to overturn the Pennsylvania election certification failed.

The 26 Republican state representatives, including Daryl Metcalfe, Eric Nelson, Eric Davanzo and Cris Dush in Western Pennsylvania, crafted the proposed resolution late Friday after attorneys for President Donald Trump made unfounded claims of sweeping voter fraud at a Senate Majority Policy Committee hearing in Gettysburg.

House Republican leaders, however, declined to grant extra time in order to consider the proposed resolution. The legislative session ended Monday, as scheduled.

Officials said the chamber did not have adequate time to consider any new resolutions, each of which must be considered for three days, before adjourning. Moreover, House Majority leader Kerry Benninghoff and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman told the Centre Daily Times that the Legislature “does not and will not have a hand in choosing the state’s presidential electors, or in deciding the outcome of the presidential election,” and that its Electoral College votes will be awarded to the winner of the popular vote as required by law.

Their decision to adjourn without considering the proposed resolution marked the most recent setback for a host of unsuccessful challenges to the general election here and across the nation.

On Monday, Arizona officials certified election results there, officially declaring Biden the winner by 10,500 votes. That news came as Trump’s lawyers there argued without evidence that the election was marred by widespread voter fraud.

In Pennsylvania, Nelson, the Hempfield Republican who joined in the unsuccessful resolution effort to withdraw the election certification in Pennsylvania, said his group plans to release a report soon. He said it would document “sizable irregularities with mail-in ballots between Nov. 3 and Nov. 4.”

Nelson, who previously said he knew of counties that counted more mail in ballots than they sent out, conceded that similar allegations by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the Gettysburg hearing falsely conflated mail-in ballot requests from the primary in June with balloting in the November general election when he asserted more ballots were counted than sent out.

Nonetheless, Nelson insisted there were significant ballot irregularities in Allegheny, Philadelphia and Delaware counties, and his group is comparing the number of mail-in ballots to the number of envelopes received.

“We have some major problems which need to be addressed before the election results ultimately are certified,” Nelson said. “My goal is fair, honest and accurate elections.”

Election experts have repeatedly asserted there is no evidence of fraud in the election that saw Trump losing the White House even as Republicans in statewide races scored significant victories.

“We have paper ballots for every single ballot cast in the election. This idea that there is somewhere results that are not the ones we see being certified is not reality,” said Christopher Deluzio, policy director for the University of Pittsburgh Center for Cyber Law, Policy and Security.

“What they’re saying in the public sphere, whether it’s on social media and these hearings, is very different from what they’re putting in their legal filings. They can make these widespread allegations, but they aren’t making them in court,” said Deluzio, an attorney who has studied election issues.

Nor, it appears, did they make a case sufficient for a bipartisan panel in Pennsylvania to take up their questions about the election outcome.

In a rare move last week, the bipartisan Legislative Budget and Finance Committee rejected a House resolution requesting that it perform a statistical review of the conduct of the election.

On Saturday, the state Supreme Court rejected a lower court ruling halting the certification of election results pending a hearing on a challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s 2019 mail-in voting law. In a unanimous ruling, the high court held that the lawsuit by Congressman Mike Kelly, R-Butler, and several other Republicans was filed long after the expiration date for such arguments. Kelly had requested that the court throw out 2.5 million mail-in ballots cast under the law or to decertify election results and direct the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to pick Pennsylvania’s presidential electors.

That decision came a day after the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal from the Trump campaign seeking to set aside election results based on complaints that observers in Philadelphia and Allegheny County were not provided adequate access to the count.

Norman Eisen, outside legal counsel to the Voter Protection Program, a nonpartisan election integrity group, said there is no history of election certifications being withdrawn in the United States.

“The truth is this was actually one the most error-free, most secure and best president elections the U.S. has ever had,” Eisen said. “And it’s all the more amazing that was the case because it occurred in the midst of a pandemic, greatly expanded mail-in voting, attacks by the president and dubious activity by his appointee at the post office.”

Deb Erdley is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Deb at 724-850-1209, derdley@triblive.com or via Twitter .

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