Leader of election review discusses approach
HARRISBURG — The Republican senator tapped to take over an “Arizona-style” audit of Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential election says there’s potential for his investigation to expand across the state.
Sen. Cris Dush, of Jefferson County, indicated he doesn’t feel compelled to limit it to York, Tioga and Philadelphia counties. Those are the counties Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin County, had targeted when he began his election review.
Last week, Mr. Mastriano was suddenly replaced by Mr. Dush as chairman of the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee, which is overseeing the election audit. Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre County, ousted Mr. Mastriano and reassigned his staff in an unusually volatile feud within the GOP caucus.
Mr. Dush said he lacks confidence in the 2020 vote count. In an interview Mr. Dush said, “Nobody in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania can tell you who the winner was in any of these races from November 2020.”
Gov. Tom Wolf, Democratic lawmakers and even some of Mr. Dush’s Senate Republican colleagues are critical of the upcoming audit, which is expected to cost millions of dollars. They consider it unnecessary, a waste of money and unwarranted given the lack of credible evidence of any election fraud. Mr. Wolf said Republican lawmakers’ willingness to echo former President Donald Trump’s claims about a rigged election are undermining public confidence in elections.
Numerous court rulings in Pennsylvania and around the nation found there was no widespread fraud in the election. Federal, local and state officials also said there was no evidence
of widespread fraud to disprove that Joe Biden won in Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.
But Mr. Dush and Senate leaders said people want to know “the truth.”
Dush’s committee could meet as soon as next week to begin laying the investigation’s foundation. He said he was given no set deadline but Mr. Corman and Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland County, told him they want it to be done “thoroughly, legally and responsibly with full transparency.”
Mr. Trump is among those who will be watching to see what transpires. Mr. Dush said Mr. Trump called him last Saturday to congratulate him on his appointment and also put him on notice.
“He congratulated me and said that he wanted to have confidence in me,” Mr. Dush said. “He’s going to be watching me.”
Even as Democrats deride the audit, some conservatives, including allies of Mr. Mastriano, have said Mr. Dush isn’t up to the task of a review of the election.
Mr. Dush said he wants to focus on the impact of the state Supreme Court decisions from last September and October and former Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar’s directive to counties to abide by those rulings. One of those rulings allowed counties to count late-arriving mail-in ballots. Another barred counties from rejecting mail-in ballots based on signature comparisons.
“The Supreme Court did not have the authority to change Title 25 [the state’s election code],” Mr. Dush said. “The secretary of state directed the counties to [adhere to those rulings] in violation of their oath to support and defend the constitution with fidelity. There’s no fidelity there. When they take the oath, it’s to the constitution, not to the court.
“If we find other things along the way, we’ll go wherever the evidence leads,” Mr. Dush said. “But the initial thing here is we have a responsibility to ensure that we know fully what the impacts were on those unconstitutional rulings or edicts. Then we’re going to start working on legislation to correct what was done.”
Mr. Dush said at this point, there is no set budget for this project. He also wasn’t sure whether the money to pay for it was coming only out of Senate Republican Caucus accounts, saying Mr. Corman has people assigned to look into that.
Mr. Dush said it is his intention to fund the review using taxpayer money. That’s where he’d like to keep it but “we’ve got a lot more discussion to do right now. I’m not making any firm commitments on that.”