GOP leadership said Tuesday afternoon they had tasked the House State Government Committee to investigate the election. Interim chair, Rep. Seth Grove (R., York), said in a statement a review must take place “now, while all the evidence remains before us and the events leading up to our General Election are fresh in the minds of all participants.”
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Cutler did not say he was concerned about voter fraud. Still, he blamed “the very fact that individuals can question the results” on the state’s “conflicting” guidance and the high court’s decisions.
But the very same election and ballots Republicans are questioning as part of the presidential race handed the party a decisive victory in other contests across Pennsylvania. The GOP is expected to expand its majorities in the state House and Senate, and win the state auditor general and treasurer’s races. Republicans have so far raised no concern about races they won.
Cutler said he was “not concerned with, necessarily, who won or who lost. What I’m concerned with is that people no longer have faith in the process.”
Audit versus audit
State law already requires county boards of election to perform a statistical recount of 2% of ballots cast or 2,000 votes — whichever is less — before results are certified in each election to ensure voting machines were working properly and results are accurate.
Last year, the Department of State began piloting risk-limiting audits as part of a settlement with 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who sued after seeking a recount. All counties will be required to do these audits by November 2022.
The risk-limiting audits check the state’s new voting machines with paper trails, which each county was required to obtain by the end of last year as part of the settlement with Stein. The machines allow election returns captured electronically to be confirmed against the text on paper records.
The first such audits were done in Mercer County and Philadelphia in November 2019. And in August, Boockvar announced her department had completed a statewide risk-limiting audit of the June primary election.
During that audit, counties used a statistical sample of 400 randomly selected ballots and compared the votes on paper to the totals reported by vote-counting machines. The chance that the audit gave a false-positive result was less than 0.1%.
The settlement also required the Department of State to convene a post-election audit work group. Members included county election directors, Department of State representatives, Common Cause PA, nonpartisan election integrity organization Verified Voting, and the Brennan Center Democracy Program.
The work group recommended repealing the requirement for a statistical recount of random ballots and codifying the use of risk-limiting audits mandated in the Stein settlement. The members also recommended that, when an audit cannot confirm the outcome of a race, state law require a recount to be done by hand.
Hope Verelst, Sullivan County’s elections director and a member of the work group, said as of the group’s last meeting, a final report was being drafted for the legislature, but the group hadn’t met in a while.
“We’ve had to drop everything” because of the demands of this election cycle, she said.
A spokesperson for House Republicans said the audit being requested by Cutler would review legislative changes made to the election code in 2019 — including the creation of no-excuse mail voting — and examine the impact of the state Supreme Court decisions.
Lyndsay Kensinger, a spokesperson for Wolf, said “allegations of fraud and illegal activity have been repeatedly debunked and dismissed by the courts.” She did not comment on Cutler’s request.
Election officials who spoke to Spotlight PA and Votebeat said they weren’t aware of the GOP’s demands for an audit, or didn’t want to comment.
“All I care is if it’s fair,” said Lisa Dart, Carbon County’s elections director, on post-election audits generally. “No matter what happens, I just want it to be fair.”
