Madison Kwiecinski – Editor-in-Chief 

Mvk5945@psu.edu

A Pennsylvania appellate court ruled on Thursday last week that it will not be ordering Josh Shapiro’s administration to produce the records on voters and voting systems. Republican lawmakers sought in 2020 to support Donald Trump’s faulty election fraud claims. 

This decision comes nearly a year after the state Senate, held by GOP control, issued the subpoena for the detailed election records. However, the court has officially denied this request, citing that information in those records is protected by privacy laws and cannot be subpoenaed in that manner. 

The State Attorney General’s office, as well as Democratic lawmakers, have stated the information that was subpoenaed would have contained both the driver’s license number and social security number of the nearly nine million registered voters in Pennsylvania. 

Also, the Senate committee voting to issue the subpoena was done under their own internal rules at the time and can be enforced under that state’s contempt laws. However, to do it that way would not have involved a court order to implement it. 

In her 21-page-long decision, Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt wrote, “The Senate Committee has chosen to seek the election-related materials by legislative subpoena, and it is bound by that choice,” seemingly implying that the option to enforce the subpoena through the state’s contempt laws is now off the table for GOP lawmakers. 

In 2020, Trump pushed his supporters, specifically in the battleground and potential swing states, to prepare for a legal battle in the wake of the election. He asserted the idea of voter fraud, which was unproven at the time and remained so, to foster doubt and make it plausible to win the Presidency through a legal battle rather than through an election. 

Trump supporters across the nation have spent millions of dollars since the 2020 election in legal battles over potential voter fraud, despite producing no significant findings through any of these allegations. 

US News states, “Election officials in 11 of the state’s 67 counties identified 26 possible cases of voter fraud, representing 0.03 percent of Biden’s margin of victory. According to the state’s certified results, he defeated Trump in Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.” 

Even the potential cases of voter fraud amount to such a minuscule portion of the electorate that had every one of these votes been removed, there would be no difference in the election. 

As of Thursday, GOP leadership in Pennsylvania had no immediate comment on whether or not they would continue the pursuit of these voting records.