Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania have momentarily abandoned their plans for a controversial proposal to create an “Election Integrity” committee after getting pushback from Democrats.
Representative Kerry Benninghoff, majority leader of the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania House of Representatives, announced that the proposal would be shelved for the remainder of the legislative session after Democrats and the local mainstream media allegedly twisted the idea “into a nefarious effort” to interfere with elections.
“Nothing can be further from the truth,” Benninghoff said of the way Democrats have spun the effort. “This caucus has maintained its commitment to the security and safety of our election with on-time results for months.”
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The Election Integrity Committee would have had subpoena power over both U.S. Postal Service employees and county election workers, and was partially proposed in response to recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings, including an ongoing debate over whether mail-in ballots received after election day should be counted.
Although the committee would include members of both major political parties, Democrats claimed to worry it would pose a threat to the electoral process. They also argued that the proposed legislation was purposely vague and would give broad powers to just a few legislators.
“Pennsylvanians deserve to have their vote counted as they cast it, not decided by five individuals of a 203-member legislative body, five individuals who would effectively speak for over 12 million residents of this commonwealth,” State Representative Melissa Shusterman (D-151) said.
Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Tom Wolf called the move a “partisan attack on the integrity of Pennsylvania elections.”
“The House Republicans are not only walking in lockstep with President Trump to try to sow chaos and put the results of the election in question, they are also taking steps to take the authority to administer elections away from the Department of State,” Wolf said in a statement.
Benninghoff still supports the plan but said in an e-mail that now is the “wrong time to run the proposal” as the 2020 election approaches. While it will not be addressed in this legislative session, it can be returned to at a future time.
Pennsylvania has been fraught with election-related concerns. In addition to the battle over the mail-in ballot window, the State Supreme Court said votes would not count unless placed in a “secrecy” envelope.
Additionally, the Trump administration filed a lawsuit against Philadelphia after it claimed poll watchers were unlawfully banned from early voting offices. But election officials counter that poll watchers do not legally need to be admitted to early voting centers. The lawsuit was thrown out over the weekend, but the Trump campaign said it intends to file an appeal.
One thing is for sure: The 2020 election is going to be a contentious one, with the possibility of voter fraud and doubts about mail ballots exacerbating the contentiousness.
Many establishment voices, particularly from the Left and including the secretaries of state in swing states such as Michigan and Ohio, are saying that voters will not know the results of the election on election night. Rather, they maintain, it may take weeks to know who really won due to the amount of time needed to count all the mail-in ballots.
Even Ellen Weintraub of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) said we are unlikely to know who really won on election night.
Anti-Trump entities are using this talking point to their advantage, disseminating the idea of a “red mirage,” which they say means President Trump will “appear” to have won on election night, but that Biden will be the true winner once the mail-in ballots are all counted days or weeks later.
Republicans, naturally, are concerned about the prospect of voter fraud and that the lengthy wait times for tallying the mail votes will be used by Democrats as a cover for coming up with as many fraudulent ballots as are necessary to reverse an election night Trump victory.
Mail-in voting has already presented problems in numerous places around the country. In New York City, for example, more than 20 percent of mail-in ballots were disqualified in this year’s primary due to missing postmarks, failing to include a voter’s signature, and other defects.
With both sides so certain that their candidate will prevail and distrustful of the opposing party’s capacity for trying to steal the election, it’s all but certain that neither of the two candidates will concede easily and that the results of the election will be strongly contested — with riots and burning from the Left sure to ensue.
