Last updated on June 9th, 2021 at 04:38 am
Republicans in Pennsylvania tried to stage a backdoor effort to audit the state‘s 2020 ballots without telling voters.
Joe Biden’s presidential victory in Pennsylvania had been certified for weeks when officials in some Republican-leaning counties began receiving strange phone calls from GOP state senators in late December.
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The lawmakers, who had been publicly questioning Biden’s win, had a request: Would the counties agree to a voluntary audit of their ballots?
The push to conduct unofficial election audits in multiple counties, described in interviews and emails obtained by The Washington Post, served as a last-ditch effort by allies of former President Donald Trump to undercut Biden’s win after failing in the courts and the state legislature.
When the requests started to be made public, the Pennsylvania Republicans behind the push backed off. If there was something wrong with the results in Pennsylvania, why wouldn’t Republicans want an audit in the light of day that would be supported by both the state and its voters?
The answer is that there was nothing wrong with the election in Pennsylvania. Republicans can’t get any support for delegitimizing the election publicly, so they tried to do it privately and keep Pennsylvanians in the dark.
The election rigging laws that Republicans are passing in red states are the policy outcome of the Big Lie. There is a more sinister effort to undermine the US electoral process, as Republicans are trying to backdoor kill democracy.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
