Pennsylvania Democrats Sue To Stop Republican Investigation of 2020 Election Results
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Friday night, Democrat state senators in Pennsylvania sued their Republican counterparts in state court in order to stop an expansive subpoena request issued as part of an investigation of the 2020 presidential election. Pennsylvania — which President Joe Biden won by more than 80,000 votes — was the center of many post-election lawsuits filed by Donald Trump and his contemporaries. Trump’s “Big Lie” asserting widespread election fraud and his many lawsuits contesting the validity of election results were found to have no merit in both the key swing state and across the country.
A Republican-controlled state Senate committee voted last week to subpoena the acting secretary of the commonwealth for election materials that provide the “names, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, portions of social security numbers and addresses of all registered voters in the Commonwealth.” In an action similar to the ongoing audit in Arizona, the committee plans to hand this information over to a third-party contractor to investigate election allegations and voter information. State Democrats argue that this request is yet another attempt to contest the 2020 election results, while Republicans counter that the subpoena and audit serve only a legislative purpose in seeking to address problems with the state’s elections processes. In their petition, the state senators argue that this investigation violates state constitutional and statutory law because it usurps the power to conduct election contests from the judiciary, constitutes an unauthorized election contest and the subpoena requests personal information from voters that is illegal to share publicly. The petitioners ask that the court bar the enforcement of the Republicans’ subpoena and stop the audit from continuing.