The Pennsylvania Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee voted along party lines to authorize a broad citation addressed to the Pennsylvania State Department. The lawsuit covers a range of election data, including voter names, addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. The petition covers not only the nearly 7 million Pennsylvanians who voted in November 2020, but all the approximately 9 million registered voters in the state.
The citation also covers a wide range of election-related information, such as communications between the State Department and county election officials, information on training for survey workers, and a copy of certified election results for all races in the 2020 general election and the 2021 primary election.
“There have been questions about the validity of the people who have been – who have voted – whether they exist or not,” Dush said. “Again, we are not responding to the proven allegations. We are investigating the allegations to determine whether or not they are made.”
Dush insisted that the outcome of the review of partisan elections would help the Senate determine whether legislative changes needed to be made before future elections.
Despite Republican claims to the committee, there has been no evidence of major electoral fraud in Pennsylvania or in any other state. But the vote is the latest indication of how Republicans in a handful of states across the country have adopted so-called audits to relit the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and appease former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Senate President Pro Tempore Republican Jake Corman said the review would help alleviate fraud concerns among Pennsylvania voters, though he did not acknowledge that these unfounded claims came from his own party leaders who amplified allegations of fraud.
“Either we improve our laws or we dispel a lot of concerns that Pennsylvania residents have,” Corman said.
State Sen. Anthony H. Williams, the top Democrat on the Senate panel, accused Republicans following the audit of bringing a “blow to democracy.”
Senate committee Democrats also expressed concern about providing addresses, driver’s license information and Social Security partial numbers to committee Republicans, as well as suppliers selected to conduct the so-called audit.
“We don’t need the name, address, driver’s license number or voters’ social security number to draft legislation on any issue, ”said state Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Democrat.
Dush said he and his legal team will select suppliers to carry out the effort, but that they have not yet made a final decision.
Dush could not guarantee that the vendors would not have ties to political candidates, including presidential aspirants, who ran last November. Nor could he say whether he would rule out companies that had ties to Sidney Powell, who was previously a member of Trump’s legal team.
“We live in a world where people are becoming more and more actively involved in the political sphere,” Dush said, but added that he wants Pennsylvanians to have confidence in the results of the GOP-led audit.
“The verification process will be rigorous,” Dush said of potential vendors. “I will not hire political activists to become researchers.”
Dush said the election review would be funded by taxpayers, but when asked if it could be extended to hundreds of thousands of dollars or potentially millions of dollars, he could not provide an estimated cost.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, criticized the Senate committee’s vote Wednesday.
“Let’s be very clear, this request for information is just one more step to undermine democracy, confidence in our elections and capitulate to Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election,” Wolf said. “It is a direct continuation of the same lies that provoked the attack on the Capitol and that have done so much to destabilize our political institutions during the ten months following last year’s elections.”
Senate committee Democrats said they planned to file a lawsuit against the subpoena. It is unclear how the Pennsylvania State Department will respond.