Keystone Today

Pennsylvania Senate Republicans filed an action in Commonwealth Court earlier this month in response to a lawsuit filed by Senate Democrats, joined by state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, to stop the subpoena of voter records in a forensic election audit investigation by a Senate committee.

In a statement issued when filing the action, Shapiro, a candidate for governor, said that “Pennsylvanians’ fundamental rights are under attack. These Senators are using their position of power to demand voters’ personal information, all so that they may continue to lie about our elections.”

State Sen. Cris Dush (R-Jefferson), chair of the Intergovernmental Operations Committee looking into the 2020 general election and 2021 primary, said Shapiro was engaging in “false narratives” and “cheap scare tactics” in fighting the subpoenas approved by the committee Sept. 15.

Dush said that their legal filing notes that the Pennsylvania Department of State provided the same information to the League of Women Voters in 2012 as part of the group’s lawsuit to overturn the state’s voter ID law.

“If they gave that information to a private third-party group then, how can they possibly argue against transferring that data to another co-equal branch of government now?” Dush said in a statement.

In addition, Dush said that election data has been shared voluntarily in the past with other parties, including private vendors maintaining the SURE (Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors) system, the Electronic Registration Information Center, the auditor general and every county in the commonwealth.

In 2019, Democratic Auditor General Eugene DePasquale found in his performance audit of SURE there were instances of duplicate driver's license records and mistaken dates on birth and voter registrations. The audit also found more than 50,000 cases of potentially inaccurate voter records including instances of “potentially bad data or sloppy record-keeping.”

His office also found that voters had multiple entries in SURE, that “could potentially allow a voter to vote more than once in an election.”  

There could be additional issues to uncover. 

In his final report, DePasquale wrote that the Department of State’s “denial of access to critical documents and excessive redaction of documentation results in the DAG (auditor general) being unable to fully achieve three of the eight audit objectives.” He further wrote that “DAG was unable to establish with any degree of reasonable assurance that the SURE system is secure and that Pennsylvania voter registration records are complete, accurate and in compliance with applicable laws, regulations and related guidelines.”

Finally, Dush noted that the filing outlines the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee’s statutory authority to review the information requested in the subpoena. It also raises the point that Rules of Parliamentary Practice state the General Assembly has the power to govern its own deliberations.

Many of the moves by Pennsylvania Republicans to revamp the state's election system stem from former President Donald Trump unfounded complaints that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election.