Pennsylvania Lycoming County 2020 Election Challenge (2022)

Lawsuit brought in December 2022 by two Lycoming County, Pennsylvania voters (who are members of a group called the Lycoming County Patriots) against Lycoming County, the Lycoming County Board of Elections, several Lycoming County commissioners and the county’s director of elections challenging the results of the November 2020 general election. The complaint alleges that the commissioners “have been shown evidence of fraud, numerous irregularities, and violations of the Election Code” and requests that the Lycoming County commissioners vote to conduct a forensic audit of the 2020 election results. Without further explaining this “evidence,” the plaintiffs cite an instance in which the commissioners “were presented evidence that residents at a home in Montoursville stated that no one at that home was registered to vote; yet, according to state voting information one person registered to vote from that address and cast a vote in the November 2020 election.”

In addition to other alleged issues, the plaintiffs claim that a Lycoming County commissioner removed six voters from the voter rolls and “seemed to admit that 6 registrations were suspicious.” The plaintiffs concede that the commissioners “voted to put this referendum on the ballot for the November 2022 election in Lycoming County” but this plan was thwarted when the commissioners “received a letter from the Pennsylvania Department of State telling the Commissioners that if they did not immediately vote to remove this referendum from the ballot that…the Department of State would sue them.” The plaintiffs argue that despite “the continued misrepresentation in most social media, cable television, local and national news programs, the United States of America is not a democracy. We are a representative republic who exists at ‘the consent of the governed.’ If any one citizen’s vote is not counted, whether because of suspicious circumstances like unavailable ballots or because of fraud, then we no longer live in a representative republic and the dream that was America is dead.”

The plaintiffs request that all materials relating to the November 2020 election are maintained, an independent third party conducts an audit of Lycoming County’s 2020 election results, the court order “Lycoming County and the Board of Elections to immediately report all the suspicious activity that has been reported to them to the district attorney’s office and report any additional suspicious circumstances that are revealed as a result of the forensic audit to the district attorney’s office” and direct the county to “decertify the results of the November 2020 election for Lycoming County in accordance with the Pennsylvania Election Code.” 

On July 5, 2023, the court dismissed the case. On July 26, the petitioners appealed to the Commonwealth Court.

STATUS: Oral argument is scheduled in the Commonwealth Court for May 7.

Last updated: September 1, 2023 9:17 am EST