Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s office pushed back on demands for an immediate audit of the Nov. 3 election, slamming allegations of fraud and voting irregularities leveled by House GOP legislators as refuted.
“Allegations of fraud and illegal activity have been repeatedly debunked and dismissed by the courts,” press secretary Lyndsay Kensinger said, adding that the charges were “intended to undermine our democracy.”
“In Philadelphia, Allegheny County, and elsewhere, officials are administering the election with the highest degree of transparency,” Kensinger continued, citing public livestreams of the ballot-counting process. “In all counties, all parties have canvass observers throughout the process. Any insinuation otherwise is a lie.”
Kensinger added: “Pennsylvania is going to fight every single attempt to disenfranchise voters. We will protect this election and the democratic process. Pennsylvania will count every vote, and we will protect the count of every vote.”
State Republican lawmakers on Tuesday called for hearings and a legislative-led audit of the election, “demanding” that the state’s election results not be certified “until a comprehensive audit is completed.”
In a statement delivered by Republican state Rep. Russ Diamond of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, GOP members of the General Assembly pointed to “a number of very troubling issues” and called for a bipartisan investigatory committee with subpoena power to review whether the Nov. 3 election was conducted fairly and in accordance with the law.
Pennsylvania House Speaker Bryan Cutler in a Nov. 6 letter to Wolf, a Democrat, likewise called for a legislative audit over several issues related to the election process and widespread use of absentee mail-in ballots, requesting that this be conducted before any results are certified.
Cutler was not involved with Tuesday’s demand, a reporter for WHYY said in a tweet.
Verified that the PA House Speaker Bryan Cutler will not be involved with whatever this is going to be https://t.co/kCrRpAVs3W
— Ryan W Briggs (@rw_briggs) November 9, 2020
“The Secretary of State permitted these actions, which are now subject to several court cases in both federal and state courts,” Cutler’s Nov. 6 letter reads. “Not surprisingly, very serious equal protection rights issues now exist due to the disparate treatment of voters from different counties.”
He added: “All these issues could have been avoided had your Secretary of State and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court simply followed the law as written.”
On Monday, the Trump campaign filed suit in Pennsylvania related to several of the issues listed, asking a federal court to block Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and the boards of elections in some counties from certifying the election results, citing voter irregularities.
“Voters in Pennsylvania were held to different standards simply based on how they chose to cast their ballot, and we believe this two-tiered election system resulted in potentially fraudulent votes being counted without proper verification or oversight,” Trump campaign counsel Matt Morgan said.
