Several PA Legislators Urge McConnell Not To Certify Election Vote Without Investigation
Over two dozen GOP Pennsylvania state legislators have signed on to a letter urging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy not to accept the Keystone State’s 20 Electoral College votes until allegations of major fraud are investigated.
Congress is set to meet on Jan. 6 to count the Electoral College votes from all 50 states and the District of Columbia and certify the winner of the 2020 presidential campaign.
“There are increasing concerns that the 2020 presidential election should not have been certified in Pennsylvania, with mounting and overwhelming evidence depicting election irregularities and extensive and potential fraud. The fraud must be investigated — not ignored,” the letter signed by a group of 27 state senators and representatives reads.
Among the most prominent allegations in the letter is that there are hundreds of thousands of ballots counted that cannot be connected with a voter.
“In fact, 205,122 more votes counted than the total number of voters who voted: A comparison of the official county election results to the total number of voters who cast ballots November 3, 2020…as recorded by the Department of State…show a difference of 205,122 more vote cast than voters actually voted,” the letter states.
Today, members of the PA House and Senate request that Sen Mitch McConnell and Rep Kevin McCarthy dispute the PA election results until an investigation is conducted into the numerous claims of fraud. Until this is completed, the hastily certified results can’t be trusted (pt 1) pic.twitter.com/QJ1xmRKfu7
— Senator Doug Mastriano (@SenMastriano) December 31, 2020
The legislators also claimed, based on expert testimony offered at a hearing in Gettysburg in November, that there are significant statistical anomalies, including incredibly high spikes in votes for Democrat Joe Biden.
[firefly_poll]
“In one such spike, close to 600,000 votes were dumped in a processing facility, with 570,000 of these votes going for Biden, and a paltry 3,200 for [President Donald] Trump,” the legislators wrote.
The letter also noted testimony that a “portion of the forensic evidence disappeared” in Delaware County, outside of Philadelphia.
Fox News reported regarding this issue, “A U.S. Navy veteran and data scientist from Pennsylvania alleged this week that 47 USB cards used during the state’s Nov. 3 election have gone missing — and asserted that as many as 120,000 votes cast in the election should be called into question.”
“I personally observed USB cards being uploaded to voting machines by the voting machine warehouse supervisor on multiple occasions,” poll watcher Gregory Stenstrom testified. “This person is not being observed, he’s not a part of the process that I can see, and he is walking in with baggies of USBs.”
Pennsylvania Hearing: Gregory Stentstrom – Forensic computer scientist and expert in fraud testifies. USB cards in voting machines, missing USB cards, locked doors, missing ballots, etc. #riggedelection pic.twitter.com/MSoKMpqUWl
— Apoctoz/Octo (@Apoctoz on Parler & Rumble) (@Apoctoz) November 25, 2020
The Pennsylvania Department of State’s official tally has Biden defeating Trump by 80,555 votes.
Overall, Trump won about 407,000 more votes in Pennsylvania in his reported loss to Biden in November than his win against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In an email to The Western Journal, Ellen Lyon, deputy communications director for the department, dismissed the allegations made by the Pennsylvania legislators.
“These claims are completely false,” she wrote. “Allegations of fraud and illegal activity in the 2020 presidential election have been repeatedly dismissed by state and federal judges and debunked by independent fact checkers.”
Lyon noted that former Attorney General William Barr said his department has seen no evidence of fraud significant enough to overturn the election.
“There is obviously no end to the conspiracy theories that can be fabricated, the ‘witnesses’ who will step up to make false claims, and the ‘experts’ that can be found to lend some pseudo-credibility to those claims,” Lyon wrote.
She also provided a link to an Associated Press fact-check, which offered an explanation for the 205,000 vote discrepancy.
The claim comes from a news release by Republican state Rep. Frank Ryan and several others last week.
“A comparison of official county election results to the total number of voters who voted on November 3, 2020, as recorded by the Department of State shows that 6,962,607 total ballots were reported as being cast, while DoS/SURE system records indicate that only 6,760,230 total voters actually voted,” the release said.
The AP reported that SURE apparently refers to the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors.
Wanda Murren, communications director for the Department of State, told the news outlet that some large counties have not finished uploading their voter data.
“These counties, which include Philadelphia, Allegheny [Pittsburgh], Butler and Cambria, would account for a significant number of voters,” Murren said.
“The numbers certified by the counties, not the uploading of voter histories into the SURE system, determines the ultimate certification of an election by the secretary.”
The state legislators responded to this explanation in their letter to McConnell and McCarthy, writing, “This statement confirms our concern about the data and the process controls.
“Any reasonable person would suspect that 6-8 weeks would be sufficient to upload such data.”