Trump-allied lawmaker opens Pennsylvania election audit plan

A Pennsylvania state senator who has helped spread former President Donald Trump's falsehoods about fraud in last year's presidential election asked at least three counties Wednesday to submit to a “forensic investigation” of the 2020 election and May's primary election.

Any Senate-issued subpoenas for an Arizona-style “election audit” will face strident opposition from Democrats, legal questions and almost certainly challenges in Pennsylvania's courts, as battles over election laws rage through swing states and Congress.

Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, suggested that his tactics will be similar to those used in Arizona, in an interview streamed online Wednesday by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

“As we go through the ballots, my desire is to recount them but also forensically analyze with photographic material whether the ballots were copied or filled in by a human,” Mastriano told Bannon, saying he planned to study what type of paper was used, look for what he called software “shenanigans” and review the chain of custody for the ballots.

Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, quickly objected, saying Democrats have “grave concerns about the authority and legality of such an audit,'' and in a letter asked the Senate's Republican majority leaders to “end this misguided and political farce immediately.” No county election board, prosecutor or state official has raised a concern over any sort of widespread election fraud in November's election in Pennsylvania.

Mastriano said three counties had been issued letters, and that there could be more.

Two Republican-controlled counties — Tioga and York counties — confirmed receiving letters Wednesday, as did the Democratic bastion of Philadelphia, the state's largest city.

In the letter, counties are asked to respond by July 31 with a plan to comply and to propose a timeline “regarding inspection, testing or sampling of items.” The sweeping, five-page information request lists 45 categories, including all ballots attempted to have been cast in the November election, logs from all computers and servers used to run the election, timelines of who accessed election equipment and “a complete end-to-end election setup for use in a laboratory.” Anticipating pushback, Mastriano told Bannon, “The only reason why anyone should be opposed to this is they have something to hide.'' Mastriano, who has spoken of his desire to bring an Arizona-style audit to Pennsylvania, also warned that the committee he chairs, the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee, could vote to issue a subpoena if a county does not adhere to his request. Tioga County Commissioner Roger C. Bunn, a Republican, said he had just received an email with Mastriano's requests and planned to get input from the board's lawyer and the elections director before he and the other two commissioners decide how to respond. “I certainly want our elections to be fair and honest,” Bunn said. “So we'll see what they're requesting and what we can do.” Philadelphia election officials said they were discussing a response with agency lawyers. A spokesman for the York County Board of Commissioners declined comment.

Mastriano does not suggest in the letter that his aim is to overturn President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election, but rather to restore trust in elections and “adequately consider future legislation” on election law. But he does not back off suggestions that fraud occurred, and in his letter he distorts the actions of state judges and election officials in the run-up to the election.

The Associated Press reported Friday that Mastriano led a private briefing last week for Republican senators on his plan and solicited legal advice from a Philadelphia-based law firm about the Senate Republican caucus using private money to finance consultants and lawyers on the investigation. The process could cost millions of dollars.

Trump has applied pressure to Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania to conduct an Arizona-style audit, as he has in other states he lost narrowly to Biden.

In Arizona, the Republican-controlled state Senate used its subpoena power to take possession of more than 2 million ballots and the machines that counted them, along with computer data.

Mastriano has said he is considering running for governor and has claimed that Trump “asked me” to run. Mastriano, an enthusiastic Trump backer during last year's election, has on several occasions leveraged his elected position in the cause of Trump's efforts to reverse his re-election loss. Mastriano led a Senate Republican Policy Committee hearing in Gettysburg in November to which Trump called in, and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was the featured speaker. There, they aired baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud.

In December, he signed a statement with 63 other Republican state lawmakers urging members of Congress to block Pennsylvania's electoral votes from being cast for Biden.