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.

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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. 

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 By Dan Merica, CNN

(CNN) For just the second time in more than seven decades, a Democrat will carry Arizona in a presidential election, a monumental shift for a state that was once a Republican stronghold.

CNN projected on Thursday that President-elect Joe Biden will carry Arizona, defeating President Donald Trump and providing Democrats in Arizona and the universe of allied grassroots organizations in the state with a crowning achievement a decade in the making.

Biden’s win in the state that propelled Republican leaders like Barry Goldwater and John McCain to national prominence could foretell problems for the party going forward. Three key shifts in the state helped Democrats this year: a growing Latino population that leans Democratic, a surge in voters moving to Arizona from more liberal states like California and Illinois, and the way suburban voters have starkly broken with a Republican Party led by someone like Trump.

Arizona, by going blue, is moving closer to its neighbor to the northwest — Nevada, where Democrats have taken control of almost all aspects of government — and away from the state’s traditional rightward bent.

The Democratic victory — declared days after CNN projected Biden’s win in the presidential race — was anchored by Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and nearly 60% of all people in the state. Maricopa is the fastest-growing county in the country, transforming over the last two decades into a sprawling mass of metropolitan hubs, sun-scorched planned communities and bustling strip malls.

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