Pennsylvania State Senators Call for Delay to Electoral College Vote Certification

The U.S. Capitol as seen in Washington on Dec. 29, 2020. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo

A group of 21 state GOP senators from Pennsylvania called on Republican leaders of the U.S. House and Senate to delay certification of the Electoral College votes until a legal battle mounted by President Donald Trump against the Pennsylvania secretary of state is heard in court.

Republican senators, in a letter to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), said that they believe the election results in Pennsylvania should not have been certified by Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.

“Members, we ask for more time given the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court is to hear Trump vs. Boockvar in the coming days. We ask that you delay certification of the Electoral College to allow due process as we pursue election integrity in our commonwealth,” the lawmakers said in the letter.

They wrote that “the balance of power was taken from the state legislature, who by the U.S. and PA Constitutions, set the time, place, and manner of holding elections.”

The senators alleged that Boockvar, alongside Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, committed “numerous unlawful violations” that took away power from the state legislature.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had “overstepped their bounds,” the senators said, when it ruled to approve a three-day extension to mail-in ballots for the November 2020 general election. In doing so, the court also approved the arrangement that ballots mailed in without a postmark would be counted.

Despite a petition by the state’s Republican Senate, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the extension.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) enters Capitol Hill in Washington, on Jan. 1, 2021. Joshua Roberts/Reuters

The senators in their letter also took note of another ruling from the state’s Supreme Court over signatures on mail-in ballots, which prohibits counties from rejecting mail-in ballots because a signature may not match the one on the voter’s registration form.

Boockvar is accused in the letter of having “usurped legislative authority” by “allowing for a proliferation of unsecured drop boxes in key Democratic areas,” and “on the day before the election, encouraged some counties (not all) to notify party and candidate representatives of mail-in voters whose ballots contained disqualifying defects and allowing them to ‘cure’ these defects.”

The lawmakers also wrote that Republican poll watchers were prohibited to watch the canvassing of ballots in Philadelphia. Even after a court order, the poll watchers were still moved to a location such that they could not effectively oversee the canvassing.

“Requests from legislators for independent investigations have been ignored by the administration,” the lawmakers wrote.

Trump late Tuesday wrote on Twitter, “BIG NEWS IN PENNSYLVANIA!” referring to the letter.

The offices of Wolf and Boockvar did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

The lawsuit from the Trump campaign, cited in the Pennsylvania senators’ letter, was filed on Dec. 21, challenging three Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings that “illegally changed” the mail-in ballot laws “immediately before and after the 2020 presidential election,” the legal team said.

The team argued that those court decisions were issued in violation of Article II of the Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Bush v. Gore that settled a recount dispute from Florida in 2000. The lawsuit seeks “all appropriate remedies,” which includes the vacating of electors that were committed to Joe Biden and allowing the Pennsylvania Legislature to call up their own electors.

On Dec. 30, 2020, 27 Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers wrote to McConnell and McCarthy, calling on them to dispute the Pennsylvania election results pending an investigation into allegations of election fraud.

Janita Kan contributed to this report.