The Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives is calling upon Governor Tom Wolf to conduct a “full audit” of the state’s election, citing alleged improprieties, suppression of lawful poll observers, and rogue Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings that ignored Pennsylvania election law.
Cutler announced he’d seek an audit in a virtual press conference on Saturday.
In a letter to the Governor, Speaker Bryan Cutler lays out a list of election irregularities that necessitate a full audit of the election. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had ordered election officials to receive and count ballots that arrived at polling places after 8PM on election day, an act that Cutler is pointing to as a violation of the state constitution. US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has ordered the Pennsylvania elections authorities to segregate the ballots received after the lawful deadline, although they’re still included in Pennsylvania’s count.
“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court unconstitutionally extended the deadline to receive late ballots and openly ignored the findings of fact and law that were issued by the Commonwealth Court.”
Cutler points to the waiver of ballot signature requirements by the Pennsylvania Secretary of State as a problematic practice in an election that was largely conducted by mail for the first time in the history of Pennsylvania. Previously, absentee mail-in voters needed a valid reason to mail in a ballot in the commonwealth’s elections.
The Republican Party had to obtain a court order to allow additional Republican poll observers into Philadelphia to monitor election processing- an order that the Philadelphia sheriff originally declined to enforce.
There doesn’t appear to be existing guidelines for a statewide audit of an election in Pennsylvania, but it’s going to be hard for Governor Wolf to shut down a request for review of such a close, controversial and contentious election. Cutler accuses Governor Wolf of enabling the alleged election improprieties through faulty oversight of the state government.
“Governor, all these issues could have been avoided had your Secretary of State and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court simply followed the law as written.”