Keystone Today

The Pennsylvania House approved proposed constitutional amendments that would enact voter ID and post-election audits election laws, and a third measure that bans election officials from accepting private funds to underwrite the administration of elections. 

Lawmakers moved the measures along with a state spending plan for the fiscal year that began July 1. They have now recessed for the summer, and are scheduled to return to session in September.

The Senate had earlier approved the ban on private funding (SB 982). The bill is now before Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.

Jason Thompson, spokesman for the Senate Republican Caucus, told Keystone Today that it was “their understanding that the governor will sign the bill into law.”

As constitutional amendments, the photo ID and post-election audit measures still require passage in the next two-year legislative session, which starts January 2023, before going to the voters for approval.

Both were part of a sweeping election reform bill, HB 1300, Wolf vetoed last June. If approved again by the General Assembly and then later by the voters, the measures become law without the governor’s signature.

The sponsor of HB 1300, state Rep. Seth Grove (R-York), said that both the voter ID and the audit language have the support of the voters.

“I have heard numerous calls for voter identification verification at polls, as well as audits to guarantee the authenticity of election results,” Grove said in a statement. “It is only appropriate for voters to have the final say on these issues in the form of ballot questions.”

Numerous polls have shown that voters across demographic lines support voter ID by a wide margin, including one conducted last year by Franklin & Marshall. Election integrity advocates have called for states to enact election audit laws, 

In a recent commentary, Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation, wrote that audits should be required after every election.

“Financial audits are standard practice in the business world,” he wrote. “Election audits also should be standard practice in every state after every election. Audits would determine whether the election was administered honestly, fairly, accurately and in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.”

The legislation banning private funding of election was in reaction to numerous reports that nonprofit the Center for Tech and Civic Life, flush with millions donated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, granted money to election officials. In return, the officials were instructed to follow a set of guidelines that critics contend amounted to a get out the vote drive for the Democratic Party.

Zuckerberg has since stated that he would no longer underwrite the administration of elections.

House Republican staffer Greg Gross, who worked on the legislation, told Keystone Today that it was important to move the legislation to ban private funding even though Zuckerberg has sworn off future involvement. The bill covers funding from all sources, he said.