By Stephen Caruso, Pennsylvania Capital-Star
While the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania House is preparing for a wide ranging review of the 2020 election, the review appears unlikely to impact President Donald Trump’s loss in the Keystone State.
That’s despite days of rallies, one big, most small, by ardent Trump loyalists from across the country outside the state Capitol calling for the Legislature to overturn the election results on baseless assertion of election fraud.
That reality became clear Tuesday, as House Speaker Bryan Cutler tapped Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, to assess state election law and the administration of the recent presidential contest at least until the end of November. Cutler appointed Grove the acting chairman of House State Government Committee. He’ll replace retiring Rep. Garth Everett, R-Lycoming.
“We’re concerned with the administration of the election, and that will be the focus of the committee,” Cutler said at a press conference Tuesday.
Cutler added that “mismanagement” by counties, including differing interpretations of state law, had led voters to not trust the results of the election.
On such issues as providing voters a chance to to fix a mail-in ballot mistake to when to start processing ballots to rules for poll watching, different counties followed different standards.
Such discrepancies sparked a number of lawsuits, mostly unsuccessful, from Trump’s re-election campaign, as he attempts to sow uncertainty around his projected loss in the 2020 election.
While Cutler did call for preliminary results by the end of the month, he did not say that certification of the final results should wait for the completion of the legislative report.
But a delay on final results pending a House investigation was what about two dozen arch-conservative Republicans called for early Tuesday morning, echoing Trump’s base.
Try our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics, FREE for a full month
At the press conference, the lawmakers, led by Rep. Dawn Keefer, R-York, said that the Wolf administration should not certify election results until after the Legislature completed its own review of the election.
The lawmakers described getting a wave of phone calls from constituents reporting what they think is voter fraud.
When pressed for specifics, Keefer said that she and others “just got a lot of allegations” and said they are “too in the weeds” to comment about them.
Even if these results were delayed, it is highly unlikely that it would change the outcome of the presidential race.
There is no deadline to certify election results in Pennsylvania under state law, but Congress must certify electoral college results by Dec. 8.
But there is not a legal pathway for the General Assembly to influence this outcome.
