A top senator in Pennsylvania said on June 5 that he supports an audit of the 2020 presidential election.
“I 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. This 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," state Sen. David Argall, a Republican who chairs the Pennsylvania Senate’s State Government Committee, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
“This is just one of many election reform efforts which I hope to see approved here in the next few weeks.”
A spokesman for the senator declined to say whether he had spoken with Republican state Sens. Doug Mastriano or Cris Dush, who recently returned from touring the forensic audit taking place in Maricopa County, Arizona.
Both Mastriano and Dush support an audit in Pennsylvania.
Because Republicans control the Pennsylvania Legislature, the state Senate’s State Government Committee has seven Republicans and four Democrats, with Mastriano and Dush both serving as members.
“This was the most impressive audit I’ve ever seen. This level of voter integrity here, of forensically analyzing ballots, it’s all science, it’s not subjective at all. It’s going through every ballot and seeing if ballots were thrown on the copy machine, and they could tell that forensically,” Mastriano told supporters in a Facebook Live video this week.
“The 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.”
The resolution said that there were “a litany of inconsistencies” in the election stemming from orders and guidance, such as some counties not segregating ballots that were received after Election Day.
After the resolution was approved, the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee voted 2–1 against performing an audit.
State Rep. Jake Wheatley, who joined state Sen. Jim Brewster in voting against conducting an audit, said in a meeting before the vote that an audit would be a waste of time, considering the Pennsylvania State Department planned to do an election review.
“I’m at a loss as to what the purpose of the resolution is and why it’s even necessary if the work’s going to be done,” Brewster said.
Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Mensch, a Republican, voted in favor of the measure. Pennsylvania Rep. Stephen Barrar, a Republican who later retired, missed the vote. A tie vote on the resolution would have also failed.
Pennsylvania House State Government Chairman Seth Grove, a Republican, mentioned the vote this week, adding: “The 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.”
Mensch in April introduced legislation that would require Pennsylvania’s auditor general to perform an audit of ballots cast in the 2020 election. Argall referenced the bill while speaking to The Associated Press.
“There’s an enormous amount of election-related bills pending for the month of June, and this is one of them,” Argall said.
The Pennsylvania Department of State later carried out what was described as a statewide risk-limiting audit pilot, which featured a review of more than 45,000 randomly selected ballots. Pennsylvania’s former Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, said in February that the audit showed “strong evidence” that the ballot count was correct.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf was among the Democrats this week condemning efforts to do another audit.
“What they’re calling for isn’t an ‘audit.’ It’s a taxpayer-funded disinformation campaign and a disgrace to democracy,” Wolf said in a Twitter post. “Pennsylvania had a free and secure election. That’s a fact. Pennsylvanians deserve better from their elected officials.”
