Spencer Finley

Business & Science Editor

sjf5814@psu.edu

On September 10th, the Associated Press published an article detailing plans put forth by the Pennsylvania Republican Party to initiate a “forensic investigation” into reports of fraud in the 2020 election. 

This partisan reexamination of the established results of the 2020 Presidential Election would require the personal information of millions of PA voters, including their names, addresses, a partial social security number and the candidate for whom they voted. 

Many members of the State Republican Party have said that there is currently no evidence to support the notion that voter fraud had any kind of measurable impact on last year’s election. Despite that, many insist on pushing forward with this wasteful and dangerous investigation because they say that many counties changed their mail-in voting laws too soon before the election and to ensure that no dead voters participated in last year’s elections. However, experts, including various secretaries of state and county elections officials, have said that these claims of fraud are meritless and that in the long run, these baseless claims of fraud have the potential to destroy our system of government. 

Despite repeated cries of fraud and abuse from former President Donald Trump and his allies, the 2020 election has been widely and repeatedly recognized as being fair and secure. In a statement put forth by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency on November 12, 2020, various election securities officials including the head of CISA Bob Kolasky, National Association of Secretaries of State head Toulouse Oliver, and the members of Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council’s Executive Board have said “The November 3rd [2020] election was the most secure in American history.”

They continued, “While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.” 

Despite assurances such as these from election security experts and state and local elections officials, partisan efforts to cast doubt on the results of the election have been met with some measure of success. For example, the recent election audit in the state of Arizona. Republican state legislators commissioned a biased, partisan, and unqualified private company called Cyber Ninjas, to carry out an audit of the 2020 Presidential Election in the State of Arizona. 

According to Forbes, the ensuing “investigation” initially cost Arizona taxpayers $150,000 but ended up costing significantly more due to the voting machines used by Maricopa County being compromised when they were seized by the Cyber Ninjas and needing replaced.

According to CBS news, the “audit” consisted of not only ballot recounting and signature verification, but, also included running the ballots under ultraviolet lights to check for watermarks because some QAnnon conspiracy theorists held the belief that the Trump Administration had secretly watermarked ballots to prevent fraud. 

Worse, according to CBS News, counters were observed with blue and black ink pens on the counting floor, which is strictly prohibited under Arizona state law for fear that ballots might be altered during counting. 

This matters in PA because certain key figures, including the President Pro Tempore of the State Senate and the head of the Intergovernmental Operations Committee, have called for a similar audit using taxpayer dollars in the State of Pennsylvania with hearings and subpoenas to happen in the immediate future. According to Spotlight PA, Republican President Pro Tempore of the PA State Senate, Jake Corman, has instructed the State Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee to take necessary steps to prepare for a full forensic audit of the 2020 presidential election, which would require the private information of every Pennsylvania voter.

Proponents of the audit say that its purpose is to restore faith in the electoral process and to examine the effect that changing election guidance had on the 2020 election. Critics of the effort to re-investigate the election have pointed out that examining such information would violate a voter’s right to privacy and a secret ballot and says that this audit is merely an attempt to continue the conspiracy that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former president Donald Trump.

When one examines the pernicious effect which these claims have already affected upon our government and upon our political climate, the negative impact of these baseless claims of fraud and abuse become immediately evident. The most obvious example of the negative repercussions of repeatedly claiming that an election was stolen was the attack on the Capitol on January 6th; here was a tangible, real-world attack on the government of the United States, with attempts made on the lives of members of Congress and the Vice President of the United States. People of both political parties across the country were rightfully mortified immediately following January 6th. 

However, even after January 6th, many members of the Republican Party have doubled down on claims that voter fraud swayed the 2020 presidential election in President Biden’s favor. Talk of auditing the presidential election in the State of Pennsylvania to check for dead voters or verify signatures or to ensure the security of mail-in ballots is a continuation of the same divisive political rhetoric that caused the national government to be attacked just this year.

This talk of reexamining the 2020 election in Pennsylvania does nothing more than fuel the insidious claims of conspiracy which already abound, which in turn increases the likelihood of future attacks on our political system, which may be more successful the next time they occur.

PA’s ballots have already been counted, recounted, verified and certified; another recount is not necessary almost a year after the 2020 election to confirm yet again that President Biden is indeed the legitimately elected President of the United States. Members of the State Legislature in support of this effort are either acting in bad faith or are in possession of such limited powers of reasoning that they have no business representing the people of our great state in any capacity. It is time that we stop playing political games with the legitimate results of democratic elections- nothing less than the future of representative democracy is at stake.