Keystone Today

Officials with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s Department of State failed to show Tuesday for a scheduled hearing by the State Senate Government Committee about election reform legislation, Senate Bill 878.

SB 878 would implement recommendations of the bipartisan Senate Special Committee on Election Integrity and Reform.

Pennsylvania Sen. David Argall (R-Rush Township), committee chairman and Republican sponsor of the bill, said that Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid and other officials had earlier agreed to attend. The other prime sponsor of the bill is the Democratic committee chairman Sen. Sharif Street (D-Philadelphia).

Sen. David Argall | Wikimedia Commons

In a statement released after the hearing, Argall said that the governor is “bound by the Constitution to share powers with the Legislature, not act unilaterally like a king,” according to Argall's website.

“The Department of State has been a very troubled department in recent years, with a high degree of turnover at its top position -- much higher than usual,” Argall said. “Both Gov. (Ed) Rendell and Gov. (Tom) Corbett had just one secretary during their respective tenures, while Acting Secretary Degraffenreid is now the fourth to serve under Gov. Wolf."

He added that the legislation is the product of months of public hearings.

“To move the bill forward, it would be very helpful to actually discuss the issue, in public, with the Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth, as we had previously agreed,” Argall said, according to his website.

The Argall/Sharif bill would, among other changes to election procedure, allow for mail-in ballot pre-canvassing at least three days before an election and push back the deadline to receive applications for mail-in ballots from one week to two weeks before an election. The bill also includes guidance for mail-in ballot tracking through a barcode system, drop box security and live streams for the counting process.

Argall said that he would reconvene the meeting Wednesday if the officials agreed to attend.

The dust-up over the hearing is part of ongoing clash between the Republican-controlled Legislature and the Democratic governor over election reform. In late June, Wolf vetoed sweeping voter integrity legislation, House Bill 1300, introduced by Pennsylvania Rep. Seth Grove (R-York) after weeks of hearings conducted by the State Government Committee, which Grove chairs, into the state’s election management flaws. Late last month, the committee approved an updated version of the bill, HB 1800, and a proposed constitutional amendment to require voter ID for in-person voting.

In the Pennsylvania Senate, a forensic investigation by the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee, chaired by Cris Dush (R-Brookville) continues into the 2020 General Election results and the 2021 Primary Election results.