{"id":68242,"date":"2021-06-07T16:30:37","date_gmt":"2021-06-07T20:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=68242"},"modified":"2021-06-07T16:36:43","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T20:36:43","slug":"now-pennsylvania-is-looking-at-an-election-audit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=68242","title":{"rendered":"Now Pennsylvania Is Looking At An Election Audit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Top Pennsylvania Senator Says He Supports Election Audit<\/h1>\n

By Zachary Stieber
\nThe Epoch Times,<\/p>\n

A top senator in\u00a0Pennsylvania<\/a>\u00a0said Saturday that he supports an\u00a0audit<\/a>\u00a0of the 2020 presidential election.<\/p>\n

\u201cI support the call for an election audit, in order to answer any lingering questions that still remain about the fairness of the 2020 elections in Pennsylvania.<\/strong>\u00a0This is the best path forward to address the legitimate concerns of the large majority of my constituents who voted to reelect President [Donald] Trump, as well as all Pennsylvanians,\u201d\u00a0state Sen. David Argall, a Republican who chairs the Pennsylvania Senate\u2019s State Government Committee, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just one of many election reform efforts which I hope to see approved here in the next few weeks<\/strong>,\u201d he added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Argall had\u00a0earlier said<\/a>\u00a0he was reviewing the pros and cons of a potential audit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n

A spokesman for the senator declined to say whether he had spoken with state Sens. Doug Mastriano or Cris Dush, who recently returned from touring the forensic audit taking place in Maricopa County, Arizona.<\/p>\n

Both Mastriano and Dush support an audit in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

The Arizona audit started after an Arizona Senate panel\u00a0issued subpoenas<\/a>\u00a0for election equipment and ballots.<\/p>\n

Because Republicans control the Pennsylvania Legislature, the state Senate\u2019s State Government Committee has seven Republicans and four Democrats. Mastriano and Dush are two of the GOP members.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the most impressive audit I\u2019ve ever seen. This level of voter integrity here, of forensically analyzing ballots, it\u2019s all science, it\u2019s not subjective at all. It\u2019s going through every ballot and seeing if ballots were thrown on the copy machine and they could tell that forensically,\u201d Mastriano told supporters in a Facebook Live video this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people overwhelmingly want an audit. I think just a county or two would do. My preference would be a Democrat and a Republican County, and let the chips fall where they may,\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0he added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n

Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 General Election are examined and recounted by contractors working for Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Ariz., on May 6, 2021. (Matt York\/Pool\/AP Photo)<\/em><\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives in November 2020 approved\u00a0a resolution<\/a>\u00a0that called for the\u00a0Legislative Budget and Finance Committee, a bipartisan committee, to conduct an audit or contract with an outside firm to carry one out.<\/p>\n

The resolution said that there were \u201ca litany of inconsistencies\u201d in the election stemming from orders and guidance, such as some counties not segregating ballots that were received after Election Day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the resolution was approved, the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee voted 2-1 against performing an audit.<\/p>\n

State Rep.\u00a0Jake Wheatley, who joined state Sen. Jim Brewster in voting against conducting an audit, told a meeting before the vote that an audit would be a waste of time, considering the Pennsylvania Department of State planned to do an election review.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m at a loss as to what the purpose of the resolution is and why it\u2019s even necessary, if the work\u2019s going to be done,\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>added Brewster.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Mensch, a Republican, voted yes. Pennsylvania Rep. Stephen Barrar, a Republican who later retired, missed the vote. A tie vote would have failed.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania House\u00a0State Government Chairman Seth Grove, a Republican, mentioned the vote this week before adding:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe PA House of Representatives will not be authorizing any further audits on any previous election. We are focused on fixing our broken election law to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mensch in April introduced legislation that would require Pennsylvania\u2019s auditor general to perform an audit of ballots cast in the 2020 election. Argall referenced the bill while speaking to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an enormous amount of election-related bills pending for the month of June, and this is one of them,\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Argall said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Pennsylvania Department of State later carried out what was described as\u00a0a statewide risk-limiting audit pilot, which featured a review of over 45,000 randomly-selected ballots.\u00a0Pennsylvania\u2019s former Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, said in February that the audit\u00a0showed \u201cstrong evidence\u201d that the ballot count was correct.<\/p>\n

An election assessment was recently completed in Fulton County, Pennsylvania. Wake Technology Services Inc., a firm involved in the Maricopa County audit, performed the assessment, which\u00a0found errors in ballot scanning<\/a>\u00a0and four other issues.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf was among the Democrats this week condemning efforts to do another audit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they\u2019re calling for isn\u2019t an \u2018audit.\u2019 It\u2019s a taxpayer-funded disinformation campaign and a disgrace to democracy,\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Wolf said in a Twitter post.\u00a0\u201cPennsylvania had a free and secure election. That\u2019s a fact. Pennsylvanians deserve better from their elected officials.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

___
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Top Pennsylvania Senator Says He Supports Election Audit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}