More states are showing an increased interest in conducting their very own Arizona-style election audits.
Several state reps have traveled to Arizona to tour the process.
Pennsylvania may very well be the next state to initiate their own election audit.
Several key PA lawmakers visited AZ earlier this month.
With support from President Donald Trump, as well as half the country, there’s a good chance that certain states are beginning to feel the pressure to do the right thing.
One such leader is PA state senator David Argall, who now says he would support a forensic audit.
Our friends over at the Washington Examiner have more on the possibility of an election audit in Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania appears to be on the precipice of initiating an Arizona-style audit of the 2020 election.
State Sen. David Argall, who heads a committee that oversees elections, told local news outlets he favors a forensic audit of the contest that state and federal officials insist was secure.
The Republican, under pressure by former President Donald Trump to take action, told the Capital-Star the audit is now a “very real possibility." The report said he is considering subpoenas for ballot information and has yet to decide which jurisdictions to send them.
“There are a lot of things under consideration right now, and I told them to check back in a week or two, and we hope to have some more detail,” he told the outlet after meeting with audit-supporting activists on Thursday.
Pennsylvania and Arizona are two states won by President Joe Biden last year in which post-election audits showed no widespread fraud.
But after dozens of lawsuits with election fraud allegations and voting irregularities were rejected by courts around the country, the audit in Maricopa County, commissioned by the GOP-led Arizona Senate, has become a beacon of hope for Trump and his supporters who herald the legislature-backed review as a model for other states to replicate.
Several states have been paying very close attention to what's happening in Arizona.
AZ Senator Wendy Rogers encouraged more counties and states to consider doing the same.
Pennsylvania may be the first state to follow Arizona's lead.
One key PA state senator says he would support the audit.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has more on that very real possibility:
Experts previously told Spotlight PA and Votebeat that guidance from the Department of State on issues like “curing” mail ballots with problems like a missing privacy envelope was the result of gaps in the law. Rulings from the state’s high court, including one that allowed mail ballots to be received past the standard deadline, cited the pandemic as requiring extraordinary relief.
“Do I have 100% confidence … that everything was perfect? No, I’d really like us to take a detailed review of that,” Argall said. “That’s why we’re looking at changing pieces of the election legislation, and it’s also why I think it wouldn’t hurt at all to go back, do that audit, and say, ‘How exactly did that work out?’ ”
Those concerns, and how to fix them, have already been the subject of 10 hearings by the state House panel and culminated in a sweeping GOP proposal to change voting in Pennsylvania. Argall said he couldn’t be sure what, if anything, another audit would reveal.
Asked if he thought the election was fair and secure, he said, “Can’t we do the audit, and answer that, so that we all have a final answer?”
“So is that a yes or a no?” the interviewer responded.
“That’s, let’s do the audit and find out.”
Argall is chair of the powerful Senate State Government Committee, which, in addition to election bills, considers redistricting legislation. In a wide-ranging interview with Spotlight PA, the senator said there are talks to advance an amended version of a bill that would put additional guardrails on the decennial process of drawing new political maps.
The bill, proposed by Sen. Lisa Boscola (D., Northampton), would add more transparency to the legislative and congressional redistricting process. But Joe Kelly, her chief of staff, told Spotlight PA and Votebeat on Friday that Argall’s proposed amendment would focus only on the process by which the congressional map is drawn.
Kelly said the senator was disappointed the bill wouldn’t include reforms to how the state House and Senate maps are drawn. Unlike the congressional map, only a five-member commission of General Assembly leaders and an appointed, third-party chairman can approve the legislative maps.
Boscola hasn’t been involved in drafting the amendment, Kelly said, and was told of it Thursday.
Argall declined to provide specifics about which provisions were included in the amendment, and which might be removed, but said there appeared to be a consensus that municipal, county, and school district boundaries should be kept intact. When asked why he had not prioritized the legislation or similar redistricting reform bills in the past, Argall said he is not interested in moving measures that will not pass the House.
That chamber, at the moment, is focused on a major election overhaul that includes stricter voter ID rules, signature verification requirements for mail ballots, and in-person early voting.
Rep. Seth Grove, chair of the House State Government Committee, said earlier this month the chamber would not authorize “any further audits on any previous election” and would instead focus on changing the state’s voting statute.
But Argall said Friday he thinks it “would not be a bad idea at all to proceed with an audit” and that he hopes to “wrap up” the issue in the next few weeks. He said he would want the review to be independent, whether through the state auditor general’s office or a Senate-commissioned probe.
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